It's a weird question but I was a few years late to the party to live through the glory days of MS-DOS but I've been wondering this for a while now.
They didn't.
>>54537762
Floppy disks, Laplink, any other ways you had of transmitting infected executables.
>>54537762
with floppies
>>54537762
The Internet
>>54537780
>>54537781
so who gave the floppies to people? I'd be pretty pissed at the cunt from work who gave me a computer virus.
>>54537762
>Sonicish the edgy kid writes a visual basic virus for edge points
>"Hey Billy, Wanna check out this new cool game i downloaded from this BBS?"
>Billy shares this floppy drive with his friends in the neighborhood, usually set to trigger on a certain date
Another Scenario:
>Go to BBS
>Get AIDS
Also, Check out this youtube channel for DOS viruses https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqbkm47qBxDj-P3lI9voIAw
>>54537762
I actually got a virus from a commercial game once. Like not from a cracked copy, but from the genuine store bought floppy itself.
Someone in the copying department must have screwed up quite bad.
Also my older brother intentionally infected my machine with the Michelangelo virus once without knowing that it would permanently damage my HDD. It was just a prank xD.
Thanks for that, bro..
>>54537802
Regular people. Early viruses like AIDS were probably spread via BBSes like >>54537813 posted and then piggybacked onto routine file transfers, a lot of them were time-triggered too so you wouldn't really remember how you got it.
>>54537813
yeah I've seen his channel, its pretty cool stuff
>>54537819
man I would've been fucking devastated, what kind of shit did you lose?
>>54537851
Well I was like 9 years old and my machine was a XT 8088, so I lost a 10MB HDD full of games I had no backups of and tons of self written little text based BASIC games.
I remember throwing a huge ragefit, crying for days and saying that I never wanted to use a computer again.
Losing Monkey Island 1 with all my savegames was the worst.
Mostly physical media but also the internet.
>>54537784
>>54537888
the internet wasn't really a big vector of viruses until long after DOS had been buried under Windows 9x
>>54537876
what got you back into computers?
>>54537762
My 8088's HDD got Stoned from my cousin's infected floppy. Cleaned it up with McAfee.
I don't think my cousin knew it was infected.
>>54537899
did DOS have an IP stack? Everyone I knew used trumpet in windows.
couldn't you save a file as image.jpeg.exe and windows would display it as "image.jpeg"?
mostly Bluetooth
>>54537909
I got a 486 SX 33 in the same year from my first communion money. (ALL OF IT. 1600DM.. Nothing left but still worth it)
That was such a huge jump in performance from the XT. I was completely blown away.
It was even capable of running Monkey Island 2, which gave me a "This game requires a 286 or better processor to run" error message on the old machine.
Lucasarts point and click adventures were amazing.
There is a story (I don't remember where I read it) where a guy brought a floppy disk into a software company, it infected all the computers and it passed on to the binaries of the marketed product.
>>54537935
Yeah Windows Explorer has this super retarded "hide known file extensions" thing set as default.
>>54537935
Yeah, that hiding of file extensions in windows is absolutely retarded, moreso since you can change the thumbnail.
I once saw a virus that hid all the files in a usb drive and put a symlink that would first run the virus (also hidden) and then open the file.
It was fun figuring it out when I tried to open an image and it spawned a console for an instant.
>>54537979
have you been lucky enough to avoid viruses since?
>>54537762
I got a virus in the 90s from some flight simulator I bought from walmart.
Also got one from a BBS once. It was the STONED.1 virus iirc. Bootsector virus. Cucked my shit up.
Also I used to give people and school floppies with viruses on them.
>>54538038
I got one again after that when I downloaded a cracked copy of Duke Nukem from a BBS (with my brother's 1200 baud acoustic coupler which took fucking ages. You know, those things where you actually had to stuff a phone into a device that looked like a reverse headphone. Those were the days), but that's about it.
>>54537979
Damn man, I think we must be about the same age, i'm 33. My first PC was a Hand-me-down Z80 based PC-XT clone, I begged and pleaded and saved birthday money to throw together a 386SX rig. That glorious feeling of finally being able to boot Doom 1 shareware...with sound!
And finally playing Lemmings 2 and Worms on a PC that wasn't the family PC that everyone else wanted to use.
In my middle school days a friend of mine named Ali gave me an infected file that screwed my windows install completely. In those days getting Windows 3.11 and DOS reinstalled was no simple task when you didn't have the original boot disk. I don't get that guy, we spent nights staying up watching Demoscene and playing boardgames
>pic related, the holy grail of gear I was desperate to own in 1995
>>54538061
>STONED
I think nearly everyone got that once in their DOS times.
YOUR PC IS NOW STONED!
Fucking goddamnit
>>54537762
the floppy disk has a virus, then you accidentally leave it in and turn on your computer, and instead of just saying "don't leave a disk in when you turn on your computer moron" it installs a rootkit which will put the virus on any floppy disk you put in from then on.
>>54538097
>Damn man, I think we must be about the same age, i'm 33.
Hah I'm turning 33 tomorrow :)
May 15th 1983.
Man Soundblaster was THE SHIT. I used to play with Demoscene trackers like Composer 669, Scream Tracker and so on.
Still have all my tracks backed up on multiple HDDs so I'll never lose them.
I still use Schism Tracker (it's a remake of Impulse Tracker that runs on modern Windows versions) to listen to them every now and then.
Oldfag nastalgia thread?
Oldfag nastalgia thread.
>>54538174
Best game ever on a 286 with DOS v5.0
>>54538174
You now remember searching for that fucking swordmaster in the woods because you didn't get that you had to follow the storekeeper
>>54538244
first programming experience with that game
It's interesting how destructive these old viruses were back in the day. "Viruses", or malware as it's commonly known today, are mostly just about scamming people out of money one way or another, whether it's through adware, bogus "anti-virus" software, malicious po-ups on websites, or cryptoware. With the exception of cryptoware, none of them are about fucking your shit up for kicks necessarily, though they often do result in slowing down old peoples' outdated machines.
>>54538174
The best BBS door.
>>54538395
I remember some virus that would set the refresh rate of old CRTs so high that they would implode.
That was some real mean shit.
i havent bought my first computer yet~
('97)
>>54538449
what the fuck, thats kinda sick people figured out that was possible but damn. I would not want to download that shit.
>>54538478
Don't buy PCs. Build them.
>you'll never know what it's like to build a 486 while physically setting dozens of jumpers on the mainboard and then watch it boot up for the first time
>that fucking IT'S ALIVE moment
>>54538511
so expensive though
im fine with using my uncle's old (he gave me it) toshiba lappy
>>54538511
fuck dude, I was just old enough to not be retarded when Win 95' came out and that shit blew my mind, I can't even imagine that feel.
>>54537918
I want to say it did since browsers like Arachne exist, but I don't know, if I wanted to get a DOS system on the internet I would always do it through Windows.
Threads like this one are why I love /g/.
Drinking a bottle of rum in the morning and talking about the good times.
I really love you guys.
>>54538635
thanks dude, I just wanted to make a thread that wasn't a memepost or shilling and it's been rad
>>54538635
Cheers mate!
I'm drinking beer at 6 am here. Gotta desinfect all the bad bacteria and viruses from the inside using alcohol.
>>54538511
Better triple check that vCore jumper with the cpu manual. It's sad, but I doubt many on /g/ would have to deal with pic related. Imagine SJW's if they knew about computers in the 90's.
>>54538690
also, did cable select ever work?
>>54538673
Cheers from Germany m8.
I need to get some sleep now.
>>54538695
Yes.
>>54538695
yes, just remember it only works with 80-conductor cables
>>54538695
Never. It always set both drives to master or slave for me and then none worked.
>>54538695
It mostly does, at least if you're dealing with prebuilt OEMs.
>>54537762
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminate_and_stay_resident_program
They would insinuate themselves into executables, which people would trade. There were all these little gimmick programs that people would trade, like one of George H. W. Bush talking while this porn star was moaning, or generated Jesse Jackson speeches. They'd worm their way around college campuses and BBSs.
>>54538511
I honestly never liked old whitebox hardware. Still don't as a collector, 486-era whitebox shit especially was always so fucking shoddy and cheap, the cases fall apart and cut your hands up while you're at it, the boards are usually lackluster with shitty chipsets that the high-end OEMs will usually out-perform, provided it was even up to their level in the first place.
Not that it wasn't a solid choice back then, the big OEMs turned out some quality shit but it came at a premium.
>>54538685
>>54538752
;-;7 anon pls
>>54538395
If I was a virus developer I'd only make RAT style viruses. Must be pretty fun exploring somebodies whole computer and spying on everything they do. Why just make a virus that kills the user's HDD? You could have a lot more fun downloading all their files and see if you could find something interesting.
I got infected with a RAT about 6 years ago, and I had a lot of weird stuff and fetishes and very personal information on that computer that the hacker could have got a hold of and used against me. I still worry about that even now
>>54538746
Holy fuck goddamn I cut myself so bad so many times while building those machines.
It's like they intentionally made everything razor sharp.
Wanna stick that RAM module in? Better have an ambulance ready for your fingers..
>>54538776
Don't worry anon. We're all friends here. We know the pain.
>>54538793
This. I worked in a white box custom PC hole-in-the-wall place. As a joke one of the employees put gauze in the bandaide drawer as a joke when we switched to inwin as our case vendor. I still have scars.
>>54538827
>I still have scars
My grandma used to call it "knitting fingers".
She was kinda surprised that I had them even though I never knit a single thing.
>>54538793
For real. I'm working on a couple cheap 386en in those shitty whitebox cases and I hate it. SIMMs are always under the fucking drive bays, the outer metal casing sounds like a goddamn gong if I so much as look at it, cable spaghetti out the ass, getting anything in and out of them is a total bitch.
Linkviruses spread by executable infection (quines); bootsector viruses by, well, infecting the bootsector. All were TSR - usually.
If you're nostalgic for the old VX scene, the Internet Archive have got your back with an emulator and de-fanged samples:
https://archive.org/details/malwaremuseum
>>54537762
I got my first virus in elementary school on a floppy with Logo and qbasic from my teacher. it was called OneHalf and it completely fucked up my PC.
>>54538156
I would get demos from mag cds, but I never figured out how to play them, I still don't know how you get them to play.
>>54540125
did you beat up your teacher? I would if I were you.
>>54538779
Incriminating shit or just blackmail shit?
>>54538174
I must have missed this one playing Sierra games, is this a text game?
Anyone ever play an old Basic game called Kings
>>54538395
There's a reason why nowadays it's just adware/cryptoware based viruses. It's because the new generation of "hackers" (mainly just either children or fucking towelheads and their shitting streets) find it too hard to actually look for exploits and just follow a guide how to set their own thing up and let it roam free.
Another reason would be regarding how the early computing era raised awareness about exploits and that security should be number one priority when developing a system.
>>54538097
fuck yeah lemmings
>>54538278
My nigga. There has never been an FPS with as much atmosphere and humour since.
>>54538690
hdd master, optical slave.
>>54540129
Most Demoscene music formats can be played with Winamp because it implements a module player (modplug? i can't remember which one. it's not 100% accurate though). Otherwise use Schism Tracker or even Renoise.
Demos need to be executed in realtime, so you have to use Dosbox or a real DOS machine.
>>54540466
>trying to copy a big file from a slave cd to master hdd
>speed goes down the drain hardcore because they both try to use the same bus at the same time
Fuck IDE
>>54540466
>>54540566
>hdd master, optical slave
what a silly idea
the optical drive is the least used so it should be master and the HDD slave on IDE
all my HDD's where all slaves back then the optical drive was good at that management shit
besides if any of the HDD's where to die then no jumpers had to be changed
Why /g/ makes life hard for them selves gee whiz.
>>54540151
why either? aren't you just interested in who people are?
Apogee made almost all of my first games I played as a kid. I knew their logo as well as Sega's or Nintendo's
>>54537762
Viruses spread through the internet, and nobody I knew used DOS on the internet. They only started to once we had Windows 9x
>my good old 286
>tfw jerusalem trending
>tfw "Bad Command or file name"
>>54537762
Sharing floppy disks without protection.
>>54540466
>>54541144
>having only one IDE channel
primary master HDD
secondary master ODD
