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There were programs that were

There were programs that were destructive, there was a Winter Olympics II game that used to sit in a loop writing to the read only memory in the 1541, unfortunately the designer of the 1541 did not qualify the select logic with R/W line and so it would contend until it got hot, and get hot enough it would ruin the chip.

The other Trojan we had would make the stepper motors in the 1541 buzz out the song "anchors away" or some similar song.
 
Bil

Re: The Commodore 64 never had a virus

Bil Herd worte:

> ...Winter Olympics II game that used to sit in a loop writing to the read only memory in the 1541, unfortunately the designer of the 1541 did not qualify the select logic with R/W
> line and so it would contend until it got hot, and get hot enough it would ruin the chip.

Heck, I didn't know about that bit of hardware destruction. So, does that mean the 1571 is impervious to that Winter Olympics II code?

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
http://www.sccaners.org

64 virus

The 64 had a few trojan horses that would erase your disk, they were extremely rare.
Most of the stuff I saw was just harmless pictures.
Way back in the end days when everyone was giving their C64's and software away I saved every disk and eventually ran a virus checking software on them. I found 3 infected disks out of thousands I had checked.

8 bits is all one needs

There existed a few true

There existed a few true viruses for C64:
 
http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208187468/The_C64_hits_25
http://hitmen.c02.at/files/docs/c64/C64_Virus_List.txt
 
Some of those viruses were reset resident, either by using the CBM reset vectors or in case of the H.I.V.-Virus by being resident in the drive RAM, so that even clearing C64 RAM or overriding it's reset vectors (fast load carts etc) was not enough to stop it.
 

Chuckt said:

Chuckt said:

> Is having the operating system in RAM better than having the operating system in ROM in modern computers?

I may be misunderstanding the above statement, but I'm guessing you mean: like the C64, a computer that does not need to load its operating system from disk, but rather loads it from ROM.

There would definitely be pros and cons.  The pro is FAST boot times (compare a modern computer booting Windows (or a Mac booting OSX for that matter) with booting a C64).  One of the cons is that it isn't easy to update the OS.  For an example, compare the C128 with the 1985 ROM with the C128DCR that has the 1986 ROM.  The 1985 ROM has a bug that doesn't upper-case the "Q" key when the CAPS LOCK key is down, but was corrected with the 1986 ROM.  (Commodore's QC didn't make sure EVERY key worked with CAPS LOCK before finalization)  (Did that frustrate you, Bil?  I think I'd be frustrated!)  A software-based OS would have been a simple download an update to correct the problem, whereas you needed to replace hardware to correct the ROM-based problem.

Which makes me wonder, Bil, if you know the answer:  is it possible to just take the 1986 ROM chip of the C128DCR and replace the original C128's native mode ROM chip and the computer still work?

The C64 did have some trojan
Oh yeah!! As a kid I
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