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Antisocial Hardware?
87C751 asks: "Over the weekend, I happened upon a deal: 10/100 PCI NICs for $1.99. I bought two and installed one in my Linux box. The box came up to POST, and the new NIC started looking for a DHCP server (which I thought was cute, if useless). Once that timed out, boot sequence continued to the message "NTLDR not found"! In an attempt to do a PXE net boot, the new NIC had -rewritten my boot sector!- Granted, a few minutes with a GRUB boot floppy set things right again, but why in the world is J. Random piece of hardware arrogant enough to frob my disc? Has anyone else been bitten by antisocial hardware?"
With the way that the functionality of hardware and software is being exchanged, I'm not surprised to see this.
On the one hand you have Winmodems using cheapo crippled hardware with software performing functions that used to be in hardware.
On the other hand, you have modern network cards ready to offload TCP/IP processing from the OS and to do DMA.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I've spent the last 25 fsking years designing controllers and adapter cards. I designed a NIC for a fsking PCjr.
I had a PDF of that NIC's controller chip data sheet on my hard drive for over a year. I know it and I know there's no frickin way *THAT* adapter can force the CPU to run code. I'm not saying other adapters can't. They can only if they are designed to.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...