Thread
Darn Scary 68k Virus
In a general sense, you are correct, but there are some virii which can destroy hardware or alter its operation. There was one virus for Mac which destroyed a certain chip in your printer which rendered the printer useless.there is no possible way that a virus could cause a literal "meltdown". this isn't the movies, software has basically a null effect on hardware. it can only do what the hardware was designed too do, and i highly doubt Motorola put in a "self destruct" instruction set into its chips.
Source: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-virus/macintosh-faq/Virus Reference 2.1.6 mentions an 'Unnamed PostScript hack' which
disables PostScript printers and requires replacement of a chip on
the printer logic board to repair. A Mac virus guru says:
"The PostScript 'Trojan' was basically a PostScript job that
toggled the printer password to some random string a number of
times. Some Apple laser printers have a firmware counter that
allows the password to only be changed a set number of times
(because of PRAM behavior or licensing -- I don't remember which),
so eventually the password would get "stuck" at some random string
that the user would not know. I have not heard any reports of
anyone suffering from this in many years."