On Fri, Aug 13, 2021 at 2:23 PM Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 13, 2021 at 2:09 PM Ethan Dicks via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Thu, Aug 12, 2021 at 9:00 PM Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
apparently some disks have the SCA virus.
Wow! That takes me back to 1987!
Yes. I actually got excited when Dennis called to say that the computer had a virus! He didn’t know which one, but I guessed the right one. I was excited because it is a “historical” virus since it is the first known for the Amiga. I just don’t know how to trigger it again to take a picture.
Like a lot of (later) Amiga viruses, it triggers when it thinks it has spread enough. For the SCA Virus, it keeps a count in memory that it writes out with each new infection and when that hits 15 or so, the next reboot gives you the message. It _might_ be triggerable by (re)booting a write-protected infected floppy. Some would do that because the detection mechanism would fire when failing to infect a floppy because it was already infected and couldn't update the count. That might only be true for some of the later viruses, but it's quick to try. The long way is to intentionally stage an infection party with a stack of clean disks by reboot, swap, reboot cycles until you get the screen. https://www.vht-dk.dk/amiga/desc/txt/sca.htm -ethan