Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    
    Remember to INSTALL the new disk to make it bootable; ie.
    
    INSTALL df1:
    
    A simple startup-sequence that woul bypass workbench and directly
    load and run an AmigaBASIC program would be...
    
    echo "Loading AMigaBASIC, please wait..."
    run AmigaBASIC [complete pathname to program to run]
    endcli >NIL:
    
    Ed.
    

    How do I make the startup-sequence so it will play a sonix song
    or show a gif file?  Would it be "gif [name of gif file] if I had
    a gif viewer named "gif".  Could I use "play [name of sonix song]"
    if I had play,sonix song and all the instruments on the same disk?
    
    Can I use CLI statements within amigabasic?
    
    If I parts of TV sports in fairy tale adventure and my games are
    slowly being destroyed mean I have a virus?
    
    10 INPUT"ARE YOU STUPID? ",a$
    
    When I run this program and try to type in something and the screen
    just flashes at me. Why?
    
    Matt
    
    

    As for the last one, (screen blinks when supplying input to basic)
    are you running MACHII or QMOUSE or some other program which insists
    on putting a window out in front of everything else?  I run QMOUSE
    with the CLOCK/MEMORY display in the upper right corner.  QMOUSE
    constantly pushes this display out front.  Whenever I input to a
    basic program, the screen 'flashes' because basic automatically
    moves it's window to the front.  
    The only way I know of right offhand to solve this battling windows
    problem is to either resize the basic window so that the qmouse
    window doesn't overlap it, or to remove qmouse when I run a program
    that needs a full-sized window.
    
    
    					John

    to keep the screen from flashing on input,
    hit the mouse in the program output window so that the cross hatch
    goes away from the window title bar.
    Tom

    Can I stop a virus by having the disks on write-protect?
    
    Matt
    

That will stop it from spreading to the write protected disks (assuming they're
not already infected). It will not prevent an infected disk from spreading it to
your computers RAM, where it will sit lurking in ambush of an un-write protected
disk (which, if you want to save any files or whatever, will happen sooner or
later).

The best thing to do is get a virus killer (VirusX).

John

    How come there are not a virus on the atari 800 or commodore 64?
    
    Matt
    

    for some unknown reason the Amiga suddenly became a very popular
    machine with hackers/virus writing ASS*oles!
    
    This may not mean that the Atari or 64 is any less vunerable...
    
    
    ideas anyone ????

Maybe cause Amiga is soooo much more complicated than those other machines that
it presented more of a challenge to those (what did .-1 call em?!)

John

    Not saying that they (8-bit machines, ala C64..) are invunerable, but
    since they have ROM-based OS's not disk based (such as Amiga, MSDOS,
    Atari ST, et al) OS's it would be harder (but not impossible) to
    corrupt them.
    
    Whereas on the disk based system, the rom gets all information for the
    operating system and its setup from the disk.  Hence if this
    information (aka. boot block) has been tampered with it can move that
    tampered information along and load it into the lowest level operations
    of the system (such as Disk Verification on the Amiga).
    
    George
    

    
    There was a classic in one of the computer mags here in the U.K
    the other week-Some ST owner (Of course) wrote in to say that they
    had a copy of a Rom virus which breaks into the weakest part of
    the rom and corrupts the machine.
     I never thought anyone could be so dumb!
                                     
    
    				-Ian-

A nit in .10 - The ST usually has a ROM-based operating system, although
several times the size of the total C64 address space, it could be
considered similar for this discussion.  It is POSSIBLE to boot from
floppy, but why wait to scrape the bits in from disk when you can just
romify them.

    Who is this person? Maybe we can sell him some
    of the new memories we've got.  W.O.M. 8^)
    
    

    
    Don't know too much about how the ST boots, but the 256K ROM space
    in the 500/2000 models (and KickStart in the A1000) contains all
    the stuff needed to build a minimum system, ie; the Exec, graphics
    stuff, Workbench, etc.
    
    The loooong boot time from floppy are due to the multitude of user
    configurations and background tasks the user wishes to invoke. 
    If I wish to, can I configure an ST by dropping files into the Autoexec
    folder, or whatever they call it?  Doesn't this become an ideal
    way to inject a virus into memory?
    
    Ed
    

    Re: .12
    
    I stand corrected.  I thought the ST was disk-based without a ROM
    option but now that I think about I *do* remember that they have
    a cartridge port or some other such animal.  Not much experience
    with them.
    
    George
    

    re: st
    
    I believe the difference is that the ST can boot up into GEM without
    requiring a floppy.  The original OS was disk-based, that was later
    burned into ROMs to put into the empty sockets (not the cartridge port).
    It is possible to load the disk-based OS on STs with the OS ROMs,
    a feature I keep hoping CBM will add for the 500/2000.  (The ST
    never had a WCS like on the 1000, the OS loaded into normal RAM)
    
    re: weakest part of the rom
    that could be the writer's interpretation of a ROM based OS's use
    of RAM data structures that could become infected with a virus.
    
    re: no 8 bit viruses
    I've seen mention of a virus for 8 bit Ataris.  A ROM OS keeps a
    virus from altering the ROM code but can't stop it from hiding in
    memory, waiting to attack your files.
    
    -Dave