In Electronics, What is a Brick?
A brick is a piece of electronics which is totally inoperable without any hope of recovery. There are a number of ways in which an appliance can be bricked, ranging from damaged firmware to physical damage to the hardware. Many companies manufacture hardware with safeguards in place which make it difficult to brick their equipment entirely, making it possible for people to reload the firmware or at least retrieve data from the device after it is rendered useless. The term “brick” entered the electronics vocabulary in the early 1990s, and it appears to have its origins in military jargon. The implication is that a piece of bricked electronics is about as useful as a brick; the only thing it’s really good for is as a door stopper. When something is especially expensive or it has sensitive data, bricking can be an immense pain, and a source of frustration and misery. One of the most common reasons for something to be bricked is a problem with the firmware. Classically, a device is interru
