Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

killer poke
     
        A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via
        insertion of invalid values (see {poke}) into a
        {memory-mapped} control {register}; used especially of various
        fairly well-known tricks on {bitty box}es without hardware
        memory management (such as the {IBM PC} and {Commodore} {PET})
        that can overload analog electronics in the monitor.
     
        See also {HCF}.
     
        (1994-11-04)