Isaac Blake ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
: Received this late last night and I thought you might be interested...  I'm
: trying to do some research into this.
 
Don't bother.
 
Although I can postulate a mail system that could, indeed, be affected
by such mail...I don't think any actually exist.  (E.g., a mail system
that allows a mail message to request that text be somehow executed
as code.)
 
Although the original author sounds like he/she was blowing smoke,
some computers have actually been susceptible to hardware damage by
loops...including, if memory serves:
 
   - IBM Cadet and/or 401 ?
      looped reading from same memory address could damage the core?
 
   - Apple II (ditto? (except, it was semicondoctor memory))
     (don't remember why this could hurt it...heat?)
 
   - PA-RISC machines, looped storing into Stable Store, which has
     a write-cycle lifetime of something like 10,000 writes
     (of course, this isn't likely to happen, anyway)
 
   - any machine with EEPROM ... looping & storing can exhaust
     the rated write-cycles.
 
And, even though it wasn't a looping problem:
 
   - the original IBM PC: if you had both a color monitor and a
     monochrome monitor, and told the motherboard you only had the
     color one, you could blow out the mono monitor.  (The mono
     board apparently didn't do a "clean" start after a power-up,
     and would send signals that could eventually damage the monitor.)
     (I remember this, since I had the above setup, and was careful
     to follow IBM's recommendations)
 
SS