So How Exactly Does A Program

kida

<div class="IPBDescription">make your hardware do tasks. eh?</div> does it send nanites? no really, how does a program or software through i am assuming the bios actually tell what the hardware to do? i know that software is basically a set of patterns or algorithms that command your computer to do certain things, but what I specifically want to know is how exactly does it cause the hardware to perform certain tasks at the very central core of the process. in other words what i want to know about is the physics behind it all. i presume it involves superconduction and whatnot. and no, google is not my best friend.

KungFuDiscoMonkey

<a href='http://computer.howstuffworks.com/' target='_blank'>http://computer.howstuffworks.com/</a>

OttoDestruct

As my professor would say, "Programmers aren't paid to think about that kind of stuff. They make the program, they should program it where they shouldn't have to think about hardware at all." Yea apparently he thinks every piece of software should be 100% portable without changing any code, I think he's full of crap, but whatever.

Thaldarin

<!--QuoteBegin-OttoDestruct+Oct 5 2004, 05:07 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (OttoDestruct @ Oct 5 2004, 05:07 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> As my professor would say, "Programmers aren't paid to think about that kind of stuff. They make the program, they should program it where they shouldn't have to think about hardware at all." Yea apparently he thinks every piece of software should be 100% portable without changing any code, I think he's full of crap, but whatever. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Valve obviously took this philosophy your teacher uses. Otherwise HL2 wouldn't need such expensive and extremely good graphics card to run it well.

jumpingjoda

Programs don't interact directly with the Hardware, that's why Operating Systems exist. The Program interacts with the Operating System, the OS instructs the hardware so it can perform the tasks which are needed to run the program.
I'm not so sure about the OS-Hardware communication, but i think it is based on the Binary System (0 is 0-1 volt, 1 is 2-3 volt).

Gwahir

more specific any I/O commands are kernel limited, that is, only the kernel can tell the cpu to perform those instructions. From there it's most often just like accessing memory where other systems take care of the routing details

Amplifier

www.allaboutcircuits.com

It may take awhile

Ratonetwothreetwoone

so can people make a program or something and get your so and so piece of hardware to run so fast it overheats or blows up or something?

edit: i r spek inglsh

Wheeee

um, there used to be viruses that would blow up your floppy drives by making them spin up for a long time/fast, and ones that would totally screw over your hard drive (stone virus, that thing sucked). but now that hardware is insulated from software, it doesn't happen. *edit* well, i'm not sure if the floppy drive actually dies, but there are virii that make them spin when empty, and i've heard that damages stuff. virii can also write to flash memory, so your bios could end up screwed. but basically, if you're using a computer without real mode (direct software access to hardware) you're pretty much safe.

taboofires

No, it can still happen. The OS layer will only stop that kind of thing if it's looking. All an attacker has to do is be creative.

Most interaction with hardware at the machine code level takes this form:

Some command
Some location

So, you can do whatever the device can understand, really (unless the OS stops you). If you try to write to the same bytes on some data storage over and over for a few hours, you can burn a hole in it. The device probably doesn't have a self destruct command, but that doesn't mean you can't overwork it until it dies.

The worst thing someone can do to an intelligently designed processer, vid card, etc. is overheat it. It would have to contain a serious design flaw for you do do worse things than that, but overheating is bad enough.

Wheeee

burn-in programs don't really damage hardware though, and those are about as close as you would get to what you're talking about...

Dorian_Gray

The only program I've seen firsthand that destroys hardware is called "Windows" (in the hands of a retard). He set the display res to max, and overrode the refresh rate to 120Hz (the res and refresh rate were both unsupported) and the monitor made some fizzy noises and turned purple (the screen, not the casing for any morons who think I meant the whole thing just turned purple for some reason) then made some crackly noises and died.