Can code damage hardware?

Can random code damage your hardware when run in Real Mode? If yes, give some examples how. What happens when the ACPI tables are overwritten? Is it possible to disable the CPU fan through code, and have the CPU overheat and break, or does the BIOS have moron-proof failsafes incase someone would do that?

>>16
Yeah, pretty much...  There were no video drivers so you just wrote bytes right into the framebuffer.  And you had to do things like poll a VGA register to know when the "gun" was in vertical retrace (not drawing anything) and do your screen-flip then to avoid tearing.