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I was tampering with the i/o ports of my computer (an UMID BZ notebook), specifically with the embedded controller and ACPI, in an attempt to switch some deactivated on-board hardware on. When I rebooted, the computer failed to boot. In fact, there is no sign anymore that it is even reacting to the power button.

Can it really be that by writing the wrong byte to the embedded controller port I destroyed my hardware?

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    I haven't heard of that being possible with modern hardware but I would suggest doing a truly cold boot--pull the battery and let it sit a bit.
    – Loren Pechtel
    Commented Jun 14, 2013 at 19:33
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    Related: Can some software physically damage hardware? (and on that note, try what @LorenPechtel suggested and clearing any non-volatile memory on the laptop's motherboard). Any chance of sharing additional details for what you attempted to do/write, and to where?
    – Breakthrough
    Commented Jun 14, 2013 at 19:36
  • Thanks for the tips. So what I tried to do was writing a utility for linux that switches on the on-board WiFi. I disassembled the Windows driver trying to reverse-engineer it. There were a few I/O port writes there that I tried to reconstruct. I wrote to ports 62h, 66h (which is ACPI) and some other ones that were the embedded controller. When I shut down the computer, the only reaction i got is a red light (instead of green) when pressing the power button. I tried a cold boot and even unsoldered the CMOS battery. I now think that I might have accidentally overwritten parts of the BIOS?
    – smoky
    Commented Jun 17, 2013 at 10:11

1 Answer 1

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If you send your signal at the wrong voltage (12v instead of 5v, 12v or 5v instead of 3.3v, etc) or shorted the wrong pins, it is possible to damage or destroy ICs on the laptop motherboard.

If you were trying to flash firmware to an internal component and did it wrong (wrong pins, incorrect firmware, etc), it's possibly bricked.

You might start with what Loren suggested. Pull the battery from the laptop and let it sit for a few minutes to let power drain from everything before putting it back together and powering it up.

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