carlsson
Veteran Member
I flipped channels, and got into the first couple of minutes of an episode of MacGyver. In picture is a CBM/PET - dunno which model, I'm awfully bad at recognizing which is which, but maybe a 3000 or 4000 series. A typical Commodore Basic listing, full of control characters scrolled by, and then the computer said BOOM and exploded in front of MacGyver and his party. The computer thus was booby-trapped by a villain.
From searching an episode guide, I found it has to be "Deathlock", episode 1:12, originally aired on January 22nd, 1986. I searched Internet and Google Usenet archive, but I didn't find anyone reporting this before, or maybe I didn't search well enough.
Nevertheless, the original PET model is said to have a killer POKE that will make the screen collapse due to too high update frequency or something. This has mutated into an urban legend that the computer itself would break, and later moved on to be told about the C64 etc. I'm not sure if the writers of this MacGyver episode were aware of the particular POKE, or if it was co-incidental to choose a CBM/PET to explode..
From searching an episode guide, I found it has to be "Deathlock", episode 1:12, originally aired on January 22nd, 1986. I searched Internet and Google Usenet archive, but I didn't find anyone reporting this before, or maybe I didn't search well enough.
Nevertheless, the original PET model is said to have a killer POKE that will make the screen collapse due to too high update frequency or something. This has mutated into an urban legend that the computer itself would break, and later moved on to be told about the C64 etc. I'm not sure if the writers of this MacGyver episode were aware of the particular POKE, or if it was co-incidental to choose a CBM/PET to explode..