[plug] CTRL-ALT-DEL

[Grahame Bowland]

On Mon, 2001-09-24 at 12:31, Christian wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2001 at 11:32:10AM +0800, Mike Holland wrote:
>  
> > If its a CPU lockup, there is no recovery.
> 
> Do CPUs actually crash?  I was always under the impression that they
> will continue the Fetch-Execute cycle indefinitely.  However, if there
> is some bug that causes them to start fetching and executing garbage
> from memory then they will just continue doing this indefinitely and the
> machine will become unresponsive.  At this point there is usually very
> little that can be done to recover.

If they overheat and their electrical properties change sufficiently
that the transistors don't switch properly then they will break.. :)

-- 
Grahame Bowland, Network and Systems Administrator
University Communications Services, The University of Western Australia
Phone: +61 8 9380 1175