MiSTer FPGA Forum

A question I remember from way back: some malware is able to physically damage hardware. Think of running disk heads across platters really fast all the time, making them bump into a mechanical guard repeatedly and causing damage. Other than this kind of method, software can't really break a computer.

But how is this for an FPGA? Could I write some sort of stupid code that would fry the chip? I'm not looking to design FPGA malware by the way, but would like to know if there are any constraints I should be aware of before burning my MiSTer with my newbie mistakes.

You could theoretically hurt either the SDRAM's IOs or the FPGA pins connected to them by running a core which handles the SDRAM clumsily and allows both chips to drive the pins at the same time - but even that's relatively unlikely. I can't think of any other way to hurt the chips.