Is this actually possible?
 

Not long after I purchased my first A500 I was going through my latest batch of copied games when I inserted a game called SPY Vs SPY. To my horror, after loading said game my beloved new machine died stone cold dead! :shocked I had to return it to the shop I bought it from and they kindly gave me a nice new replacement.
What I wanna know is...Could a game actually physically do this?, or is it just something that would have happened anyway? I had always thought that software couldnt physically damage a machine as its just code.

I never copied THAT game again :mad

As far as I know, the only hardware a virus is capable of destroying are monitors and cpus (if overclocking is done through software). The can corrupt flash roms, but they can be reprogrammed with the right equipment.

Well, apart from doing wild headmovements with the diskdrive that yould kill it, it is IMPOSIBLE to damage Amiga hardware just by software.
That must have been coincidence !

But there indeed was some Commodore PET computers of the first series that could be killed by storing a special value in a certain memory position.
This design bug made computer-history as the so called 'Killer-Poke'. ;)

@th4t1guy
Might be reprogrammable with hardware, but it's almost cheaper buying a new board than getting the hardware to reprogram.

Many women have told me that I gave them a 'Killer-poke' :hoo

That's absolutely true with flash rom used as a bios. However, flash rom used for data storage on the other hand, can be a completely different story. For example, the cd32 has a flash rom which can be accessed through workbench (using the right programs), and is not required for boot (as far as I know anyways).

I know the PET hada killer poke for tape drives, but not for the computer...

If you turned on and off the drive very fast, it would CATCH FLAMES! This was discussed in another thread :)

Anyway, I think that was a helluva coincidence... or living proof that piracy does not pay :D