Death Rally almost wrecked my calc

CompWiz · Post by **CompWiz** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 3:28 am

Death Rally by CoBB tried to burn out my screen! I was playing it, and had to put down my calc to do something else. I thought I hit clear, but instead of quitting, I looked at my calc a few minutes later to find the screen blue!

I had to remove the batteries to get rid of the blue. After that the screen looked weird. It seems to be recovering, but if the screen stays blue for too long, it can burn out and suffer permanent damage. CoBB, could you please look into this bug? It would be bad if one of your programs ruined someone's calc.

BTW my calc: 84+ SE running CrunchyOS.

kalan_vod · Post by **kalan_vod** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 3:51 am

First off its your fault for leaving it unattened, second he quit working on the project

......

CompWiz · Post by **CompWiz** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 4:25 am

But it is available for download, it should at least be non-harmful to the calc. The blue screen of death can ruin a calc. Did he even warn that the prog could cause this? If he did, then it would be OK. But when I am using games, I don't usually watch to see if one causes a blue screen.

Edit: non-harmful to the calc hardware without a warning

kalan_vod · Post by **kalan_vod** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 4:40 am

When ever I played this I never received this error, can you try agian see if it causes the same problem? Also it could've been from the other programs on your calc

. P.S. wasn't it written just for 83+ (SE)?

Spengo · Post by **Spengo** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 5:26 am

CompWiz wrote:But it is available for download, it should at least be non-harmful to the calc.

LOL ROFL NO My God, how many times have I crashed my calc with releases on ticalc.org!

Usually they put in the readme that the the author is not responsible for any damage to your calc.

But yeah, expect many crashes in your lifetime.

CoBB · Post by **CoBB** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 5:41 am

CompWiz wrote:CoBB, could you please look into this bug? It would be bad if one of your programs ruined someone's calc.

I haven't looked at the source for ages. A fatal bug in an assembly program can have utterly random results. I don't have the time to go through the code and look for possible errors. The latest version never crashed on me anyway.

Spengo · Post by **Spengo** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 6:10 am

Actually, I've never had death rally crash on me either.

I still think it would be great with multiplayer though...

dysfunction · Post by **dysfunction** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 12:25 pm

It's crashed on me a few times, but never badly, just the RAM CLEARED variety. That's why you archive everything before playing assembly games.

CompWiz · Post by **CompWiz** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 3:08 pm

LOL ROFL NO My God, how many times have I crashed my calc with releases on ticalc.org! Laughing Usually they put in the readme that the the author is not responsible for any damage to your calc. Rolling Eyes But yeah, expect many crashes in your lifetime. Cool

It's crashed on me a few times, but never badly, just the RAM CLEARED variety. That's why you archive everything before playing assembly games.

Sure, I expect that a program can be harmful in the ram-clearing sense, but I didn't expect it to be harmful to the hardware. My programs were all archived, so I'm not complaining about the RAM clear. If I hadn't checked my calc when I did, the screen could have been permanently burned out. It would have been nice if there had been at least a small warning in the readme that the blue screen could happen.

And it wasn't another program. I was playing Death Ralley, then pushed one key(Probably clear, but not sure) then the screen was blue when I looked at it a few minutes later. You can't close a program and open another with one keypress.

83+(se) progs run on 84+(se) calcs

Post by **benryves** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 3:20 pm

ANY (nontrivial) 83+ program can accidentally do that - if the stack pointer is messed up (very easy to do) at some point then the PC can possibly wander off into anywhere in RAM and the CPU will start executing whichever bytes it comes across - and if the sequence of bytes writes to the LCD port setting the LCD driver into test mode, that's just too bad.

Post by **tr1p1ea** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 3:21 pm

The problem is that crashes produce random results. Ram clear once, funcky character matrix style scrolling another time and even blue screens. Every crash has the potential to cause a blue screen effect.

CompWiz · Post by **CompWiz** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 3:27 pm

Well, no damage done, so I guess I'll just be more careful in the future.

KevinJB · Post by **KevinJB** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 9:49 pm

It would have been nice if there had been at least a small warning in the readme that the blue screen could happen.

Here we go:

Any assembly program has the potential to do anything to your calculator. And by anything, I mean crash. And by crash, I mean blue-screen. And by blue-screen, I mean it's a chance you'll have to take.

MissingIntellect · Post by **MissingIntellect** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 10:02 pm

It's a different kind of Blue Screen of Death (BSoD)!

dysfunction · Post by **dysfunction** » Fri 04 Nov, 2005 11:24 pm

I would say the BSOD v83+ qualifies as a slightly more concerning thing than the Windows one.
Windows BSOD: Reset your computer, run an HD scan.
83+ BSOD: Leave it on for 5 minutes, and get a new calc.

MaxCoderz

Death Rally almost wrecked my calc

Death Rally almost wrecked my calc

Re: Death Rally is EVIL