Don't even need to go that far. Just short all the pins and you will will kill a lot of motherboards.
My friend accidentally jammed his headphones into the front USB socket on his PC and killed the motherboard. Of course it doesn't work on all computers, my old laptop would just shut down (which is still inconvenient), and I'm not sure what would happen to my Macbook (and don't want to find out).
> Don't even need to go that far. Just short all the pins and you will will kill a lot of motherboards.
Interesting. USB 2.0 spec mandates overcurrent protection on the power rail and ability to withstand continuous short circuit to ground or power on the data pins. I think 3.0 lifted the latter requirement, though.
But I never tested actual hardware for that, besides power short-circuit protection which seems to work on my machine (YMMV).
My friend accidentally jammed his headphones into the front USB socket on his PC and killed the motherboard. Of course it doesn't work on all computers, my old laptop would just shut down (which is still inconvenient), and I'm not sure what would happen to my Macbook (and don't want to find out).