Resident 2

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¶3 VIRUS HUNTING IN PRACTICE ¶1Unfortunately all Amiga owners have gradually noted a diminishing of their original pleasure , once they have had the Amiga a while . They bought a computer, brought it home, turned it on and realised pretty quickly that a computer isn't all brightness and light. We have often heard about viruses that have caused terrible damage to public data installations on the TV and read about them in the papers, e.g the PC virus Michelangelo; but new * Amiga owners often forget that we are a smaller data installation, and just as vulnerable as the big data installations. Please attention ..., it is just not enough to have a couple of good virus killers , and imagine that they will cure all your problems. ¶3COMPUTER VIRUS A GROWING PROBLEM ¶2-------------------------------- ¶1I have followed the virus problem for the past four years and it has gradually become my hobby to 'research' into various viruses...believe it or not. I must be one of the few people in the world who is pleased to meet a new virus. (Think at me next time you meet one....!) Yes, lots of you will say: "I can probably manage to 'wave' a new boot virus, if I find one;" but alas! today the situation is quite different. Now.......a new Amiga virus comes up every week and, even worse, a lot of them are non-boot viruses. Thus June 1992 was marked by no less than 6 of these, together with 7 new boot viruses. In other words, more viruses in a single month than we had in the whole three first years the Amiga came onto the market! In my view, this development will become pretty serious if we don't all do something to stop the spread, that is to say....it means YOU TOO! ¶3SOME SIMPLE RULES ¶2----------------- ¶1So what can one do? Yes, this time I won't go into more technical de- tails, but will just lay down some ground rules: ¶31¶1. Always keep your disks write protected. If you need to write on the discs then turn off the Amiga for 60 seconds so that any possible viruses which could have sneaked into the memory will have gone. ¶32¶2. An embarrassing topic, pirate copies, never swap games and the like with someone you don't know. Viruses flourish typically in school yards and the like amongst children and the young who only consider the Amiga as a fun games machine. Learn....... to say no thank you! ¶33¶1. Once the accident has happened, don't despair but try to get hold of one of the newest virus killers which can often be found on our excellent Amiga BBS modem bases. I will mention another possibility later in this article. Remember NEWER TO USE ...a virus killer more than 3 months old. Of cause do old killers not find new virus! ¶34¶2. If you download programmes by modem, ask the 'SYS OP' which virus kil- ler program it uses to ensure that the files on the base are virus free and, last but not least, which version. Not infrequently has the 'SYS OP' been asleep for the past hour. Avoid bases like that, especially if you have a hard disk. ¶35¶1. If it so happens that it is a 'friend' who has made the virus, then go straight to the police, or to me. Kids like that aren't clever, good fri- ends but rather something else....Think of Robert Morris here in USA, the man behind the RTM virus in the PC's. The police caught few days after * he spread his virus and the court fined him to pay $10.000. I don't have * any sympathy for him, do you? * Do you realise that there is a worldwide reward here in Denmark $1000? for the names. Please contact me for more informations! ¶3HARDWARE PROBLEMS ¶2----------------- ¶1Many Amiga Owners, as much the new as the old Amiga enthusiasts, have a tendency to 'explain' everything peculiar that happens to their Amiga as a virus attack . Viruses can of course have several underhand effects: like the disk drive going berserk , the picture suddenly appearing upside down, or your clock suddenly running backwards. However, the Amiga have general faults, which is often confused with virus attack , and it is therefore understandable , that even the best virus killers have to give up on this. The most common fault in Amiga 500 and 2000 models comes from the two port circuit 8520 , which is positioned behind the main printed circuit where all the sockets are. It is my view that up to 75% of all hardware failures lead back to this touchy circuit which , in certain cases, can create 'weird' permanent or intermittent failures , when you use the printer, mouse, floppy drive or other external hardware. Both the internal and external drive can behave oddly due to a defective 8520 circuit and the Amiga can, for example, ask you to insert disk xxx in drive df0, even if it's already there, or you can get the message (now and then) : "Not a dos disk" on a disk which is otherwise completely fault free . (Remember it is always a software failure, when the fault happens every time on a specific disk.) Not long ago I was phoned by a desperate Amiga owner who had "got a new virus" , which meant that the mouse froze on the screen, but the buttons still worked. A new 8520 circuit soon cleared up the problem. A good rule to limit these problems is to screw all plugs well home and never.....swap plugs when the Amiga is turned on. Yesterday I was phoned by a new Amiga owner, who had buyed a used Amiga, and 400 disks full with pirate games, everyone infected with viruses. He told me that "installed" write protected disk got new viruses very short time after using. I asked him to try to copy to a write....protected disk! The problem was the tiny pin in his disk drive, which is controlling the disk protection. A pincers solved the problem in few seconds. ¶3WHAT THE OPERATIVE SYSTEM IS ALL ABOUT ¶2-------------------------------------- ¶1Many people have discovered that, just below the very userfriendly surface, the Amiga is not so absolutely simple. So maybe it is both right, and at the same time wrong, to call the Amiga a beginner's computer. Not less than 256 BB or 512 KB (on OS 2.0) of the operative system is in the ROM circuit in the machine and a large part of it is test and control routines which the user hardly knows anything about, except in the form of Guru messages. After thinking it over, it must be said that Commodore probably has a good sense of humour, but anyway I personally could well do without the Gurus in my machine. One can quickly feel powerless and, although salvation is near if you get hold of the programmes Guru (Fred Fish no 239) or SnoopDos (Fred Fish 451). These programmes are widely different from each other: Guru explains your guru messages, while SnoopDos continually gives messages on everything that is happening in your machine's operative system. Can this be better? ¶3THE AMIGA'S SELF TESTING ¶2------------------------ ¶1Many people who have just got themselves an Amiga often have various problems. If everything on your computer is shades of grey, then your Amiga is OK. Why so? If the machine shows anything other than a dark grey screen, a paler grey screen and then a white screen and afterwards the workbench hand, it has a fault. So the only thing you can do is to send it in to be repaired, even if it has shown other colours for only for a short period, maybe a second. Here is a little tip for the dexterous Amiga user: if your screen stays green for a shorter or longer period during start-up it is often due to a bad connection in the Agnus circuit socket. TEST PROCEDURE IS AS FOLLOWS: ¶2- Clear Chips, "forget everything" ¶1- Disable DMA and Interrupts; "stop everything else" ¶2- Clear the Screen; "white screen" ¶1- Check the Hardware; "is the whole machine alright?" ¶2- Pass or fail the Hardware to the Screen; "if yes, show a dark grey screen" ¶1- Checksum the ROMs; "are the Kickstart and keyboard circuits alright?" ¶2- Pass or fail the ROMs to the Screen; "if no, show a red screen" ¶1- System setup; "configure the machine" ¶2- Check for RAM at $C00000; "is the chipram in place?" ¶1- Move SYS-BASE to $C00000 if it exists; "if yes, use it!" ¶2- RAM Test; "if the ram circuit is OK and correctly connected, the Fat Agnus is OK" Pass or fail the RAM to the screen; "If no, show a green screen" ¶1- Check the software; "it looks as though the Kickstart's software makes sense" ¶2- Pass or fail th e Software to the Screen; "if yes, show a light grey screen" ¶1- Set up the RAM; "configure the screen" ¶2- Link the Libraries; "find the ROM based functions" ¶1- Find External RMA and link it to the list; "find all memory expansions" ¶2- Set up Interrupts and DMA; "use the road signs and the traffic lights on the bus" ¶1- Start Default Task; "look for boot-disk" ¶2- Check for 68010, 68020 and 68881; "is it a standard CPU or what?" ¶1- Check for an Exception; "are there other faults? If yes, show a yellow screen, if there is a help circuit which is at fault, show a blue screen". NB, certain forms of virus can be the reason for a yellow screen here. ¶2- System Reset; "You are allowed to show a white screen and ask for Workbench now" ¶3CAPS LOCK TEST ¶2-------------- ¶1If the keyboard functions are not alright it will flash - all according to the fault in various rhythms - with the "Caps Lock" LED. In rare cases this fault can occur after serious system crashes of the type where it also forgets time and place and the clock has to be set up again. I have myself experienced such asystem crash where the machine wasn't up and ready until two hours later, this long is a rarity but it can often take around 20 minutes on a particular occasion like this. Here is yet another little tip for the dexterous Amiga 500 owner: If your Caps Lock lights up constantly, it is almost always the big IC 6570 circuit underneath the keyboard which is faulty. This fault is unknown on the Amiga 2000. A good rule to restrict these problems is to tighten all screws well home and never plug or unplug anything while the Amiga is on. ¶3RAM EXTENSIONS ¶2-------------- ¶1The price of RAM extensions has fallen dramatically recently but so, unfortunately, has the quality. One big problem with the RAM card, and all other circuit printing which is used in the Amiga , is this card's requirement for an extremely small contact resistance between the plug in your Amiga and the circuit board's edge connector. Many problems can be avoided by rubbing the edgeconnector's gold coating vigorously about 40-60 times with apaper tissue and then afterwards put on a thin layer of acid-free vaseline or silicone grease . After 3-4 minutes dry all the visible remnants of grease CAREFULLY off the surface. A sure sign of either a defective RAM card, or a poor connection to it, is a yellow screen at the start up, instead of the normal kickstart picture. A regular source of anguish is Commodore's poorly constructed internal clock, where a software fault can put the clock out completely so that you get the message: "Battery backed up clock not found", or <unset> <unset> <unset> . If you try to put the clock in again it will run again ("Setclock opt save"), but the next time the Amiga is turned on it will often be apparent, that the clock has gone completely nuts, and can show any time imaginable. Here are a couple of little "cheats" which can rescue you: ¶31¶2. When you have to set up the clock, start by writing "Setclock opt reset". ¶32¶1. Or use your Amiga Basic on the Extras Disk", and write "Poke 14417980",and you will get a logical 0 on "hold" in your clock, and the clock will start normally. ¶33¶2. The newest setclock commands on 4972 bytes should be improved so that the faults mentioned above don't occur.