Can Linux Kill Your Hardware - A Warning to Asus T101MT Owners

But as far as I can tell, it's as likely (more likely?) to be the hardware manufacturer's fault, as the distro's.

I recall a case some years ago when a particular model (from LG?) of CD drive would be bricked by a perfectly ordinary Linux install. The LG engineers had done something "clever (or at least unusual and *very* non-standard) with the firmware. IIRC they eventually admitted the fault was theirs, and replaced broken drives.

Found it; a quick google brought me to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_poke

the paragraph relevant to the LG CD drive:

Quoting:Certain models of LG CD-ROM drives with specific firmware used an abnormal command for "update firmware": the "clear buffer" command usually used on CD-RW drives. Linux uses this command to tell the difference between CD-ROM and CD-RW drives. Most CD-ROM drives dependably return an error for the unsupported CD-RW command, but the faulty drives interpreted it as "Update Firmware", causing them to be bricked.

I don't know how much this helps...