Ah Slackware, the first time that I learned software could damage hardware. It has the option to also configure hsync on your CRT monitor, and if said monitor didn’t correctly validate the range it would permanently fuck it up.
I learned that lesson as a 12 year old in the early 90’s on an original IBM PC 5150 with a 5151 monochrome monitor, fucking with TSR’s in DOS 3.1. It must’ve made the graphics card change timing modes and the monitor immediately blew a fuse. My dad then soldered in a fuseholder so the fuse in the monitor can be replaces as needed.
Out of fear of doing further damage, I did stay away from the particular TSRs that had any relation to changing video timing modes and it didn’t happen again.
This brings back so many memories! My first distro some 25 years ago now! Something to tell my kids about. I remember it took me a couple of days to get audio to work on my first install! And I still loved it. So much water has passed under the bridge. Now 100% of the production envirnoment at work is Linux-based and so are the devices at the other end of the wire/airlink. And so are our phones, home servers and on and on. Linux skills have had the highest return
Add comment