It's also done at Rensselaer in the computer architecture class. It's usually everyone's favorite.

Here's a screenshot of the bomb I wrote for CSCI 4971: http://i.imgur.com/L0LJ1.png

The timer counted down until the end of the lab period; the student needed to cut each wire to stop the detonation. The original goal was to post to Twitter when a student made a mistake but we didn't get it implemented in time.

Here's the binary itself: http://www.cs.rpi.edu/academics/courses/spring10/csci4971/re...

That's cool, I like the design and the twitter idea is good too.

weird, kinda high level for a comp arch class. the undergrad one i took was mainly hardware implementation. I did this one at cmu as well; fun lab.

I did this assignment in a class that use "Computer Systems" book (authored by CMU profs) I think.

Is this the class you are talking about?

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15213-f05/lectur...