killer poke

from Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)

killer poke
 n.

   A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via insertion of
   invalid values (see {poke}) into a memory-mapped control register;
   used esp. of various fairly well-known tricks on {bitty box}es without
   hardware memory management (such as the IBM PC and Commodore PET) that
   can overload and trash analog electronics in the monitor. See also
   {HCF}.

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

killer poke

   A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via
   insertion of invalid values (see {poke}) into a
   {memory-mapped} control {register}; used especially of various
   fairly well-known tricks on {bitty box}es without hardware
   memory management (such as the {IBM PC} and {Commodore} {PET})
   that can overload analog electronics in the monitor.

   See also {HCF}.

   (1994-11-04)

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