Avast kept its AntiVirus program for DOS up to date until 2004 or so. Don't know what the minimum DOS version is that it requires.

I don't think I can link it here but it's easy to find. The version number was 7.70.

In any case, should you find something it would be nice if you can keep a copy of the infected file(s). Just in case it's a virus that had been lost to time 😀

Hello,

Thank you very much for this info! Super valuable. That software looks promising for sure.

Now I just need to find info what preparations the computer needs to be booted up after all these years. Don't want any smoke

Oh, also, hopefully it's not so sophisticated that it messes with the AV. Is this program installed or is it run directly from the floppy?

Both. It runs an initial scan before the installer starts copying everything to disk.

cross wrote on 2024-01-28, 20:04:

I was young at the time and cannot remember the full story. I think I got a floppy that carried the virus. The computer itself d […]
Show full quote

I was young at the time and cannot remember the full story. I think I got a floppy that carried the virus. The computer itself did not show any signs from what I remember.
However, I do recall that any floppy that had been in the machine then had a virus warning when the floppy was inserted in a more modern PC we had at the time.

Is there any software out there that would be able to wipe it from the viruses from this era? I would like to keep the original install on the disk for nostalgia reasons, if possible that is.

The system does not have any windows installation on it. It is MS-DOS, cannot confirm version right now, however should be the original install.

Any tips our pointers is highly appreciated. Fun anecdote: For some reason I seem to recall that the virus might had the name that included "Banana" or something like it. Maybe it was something known from back in the day? Might be completely wrong with that name though. It just comes to mind.

I'm not very familiar with the DOS environment or how it works under the hood, what attack surfaces there where for viruses and so on.

Thanks!

you can use my small antivirus program to check for common boot sector and file viruses from the 80' & 90's era...just transfer the file to a floppy disk, it can even disable the virus in memory even if active

I actually found the inspiration today to pull the computer out of storage and power it on.
Booted up without any issues. And the floppy drive was still working, which is great!!

However, I did try to get info about the Avast 7.70. Unfortunately the only version I found was a zip file who's totally content is above 2.8 mb.
Since the floppy drive is only 720k compatible it will take a while to transfer for sure.
Looks like this version is also for windows, so maybe not all files are needed. Is there maybe a "rescue" program, or do I simply need to copy/paste all the programs on to the model 30?

I will get some disks and format them. Do not want to re-use any disks on the machine until I have had the opportunity to scan it, this is to avoid infection of other machines.

Masaw, thank you for this link. Can you give some technical details of it? How does it work? Any web page or something for information?

cross wrote on 2024-01-29, 16:55:

it's a DOS-based portable AV I've written in 1999 and updated it few years after that. I have uploaded couple of screenshots on how use and how the program looks

Masaw, thank you for this link. Can you give some technical details of it? How does it work? Any web page or something for information?

Thanks for the screenshots!
I downloaded it and loaded a floppy with it. Attempted to run vcheck c: however, after a couple of seconds it returns back to command prompt. No error or so.
Any ideas?

I did create another floppy and the same thing happened.
So either the floppy drive in the IBM is not working correctly, or the floppy is not compatible.
However, I can DIR the disk and it shows the file and the size, and copied OK from floppy to c:
I was able to start the program from the floppy on my winME machine..
Either there really is a virus on the machine that is causing this or maybe the DOS version is not compatible with your nice program?

"ver" returns "IBM Personal Computer DOS Version 3.30" if that is of any clue

cross wrote on 2024-01-29, 18:29:

I did create another floppy and the same thing happened. So either the floppy drive in the IBM is not working correctly, or the […]
Show full quote

I did create another floppy and the same thing happened.
So either the floppy drive in the IBM is not working correctly, or the floppy is not compatible.
However, I can DIR the disk and it shows the file and the size, and copied OK from floppy to c:
I was able to start the program from the floppy on my winME machine..
Either there really is a virus on the machine that is causing this or maybe the DOS version is not compatible with your nice program?

"ver" returns "IBM Personal Computer DOS Version 3.30" if that is of any clue

oh it only runs on 286+ machines and DOS 3.30+ tho

^That's why I generally recommend the V20/V30. 😃
They make all those 286 era applications and games running that would technically run fine on any MCGA/VGA system.

Edit: "The SIMMs used are proprietary to these systems; they can only be upgraded to a maximum of 512K of RAM with a few extra chips onboard; some of which is already used by the OS leaving 640K.
The CPU can be upgraded with a NEC V30 for a *significant* performance boost and ability to run some 286 instruction sets, although in my experience it still doesn't work well as the CPU does not report as a 286 when a program does a check."

Source: http://www.ibmfiles.com/pages/ps2model25.htm

In practice, though, most games and applications don't check. They simply assume a 286.

Installing a V30 would make the experience much more enjoyable.
The original 8086 could be stored safely inside the PC (little box), so the upgrade can be undone any time.

But that's just an idea, of course. It would make the Model 30 also more special insofar, because the V20/V30 processors aren't emulated yet.
So there would be a real advantage of using that physical PC.

But back to anti-virus tools. My father had used "Carmel Turbo Anti-Virus" (TNT-Virus) back in the 90s. Version 8 or so.
It was quite common for a while and the engine was used in other programs, too.

Edit: I forgot. Some anti-virus programs like TNT-Virus create a chklist.tav file.
That's not cool if the directory structure should stay as original as possible. 🙁

Hello!

Thank you so much for this information and all assistance with this.

I would like to keep it as stock as possible. I really got nostalgic when i booted it up, and it booted straight to the little "Menu" system, unsure of the name now, but it was a commercially available menu for dos it looks like.
I even found some qbasic programs that i written. Think i was around 10 at the time, going by the dates on the filesystem. A lot of memories with this i noticed now 😁

What I really wanted with this is to just clean out the virus, if there is any.
Main question, is there a way to do this without altering the hardware in this way? No AV tools available for this particular hardware configuration?
The CPU upgrade mentioned. Is it just a drop-in upgrade and then it would run the AV without anything other changed? Even with the IBM Dos 3.3?

I do actually have another system 30 that I'm not the original owner for, I picked that up at a yard sale recently. I have not actually investigated it much. Maybe I'm lucky and its "upgraded" But its a long shot.

I do also own a Compaq Prolinea 486. Not sure if the disk would be compatible to be plugged in here and cleaned by the scantool? Would that be a viable way maybe?
I am a bit hesitant to "mix" this HDD with anything before i know what kind of virus its on there. I do not want to infect my other machines in the collection.

I do have a lot of machines in my collection but most are from the early to mid 2000s era. If the IBM HDD would work in one of those, i guess i could boot a DOS disk on them and run the scantool from it?
That way I could also isolate the virus in a good way. Guess even the scantool would work from booting a win98 boot-cd even?

My best bet might actually be to boot MS-DOS from one of the windows install medias and run the scantool. Just need to figure out the most compatible and safe way to plug in the IBM drive.
Any inputs are greatly appreciated.

IBM PC DOS or MS-DOS 3.30 is fine, but if your intention is just purely to be able to scan the HDD in that IBM PS/2 for viruses then no need to change the cpu, you can simply attach the HDD to your Compaq 486 if it's an IDE HDD, and use my AV tool .. aside from my AV , you can also use CPAV. I think it runs on 808x systems, just disable the checksum file creation option on one of its menus.

Yes!
The main object is to "simply" scan the disk to see if it actually has a infection, and if it does in the perfect world i would like it to be cleaned.

So my current best bet is, little depending on what machine I can use for this:
I do have a Dell dimension 8100 that i can create a bootable ME floppy from and then load the vcheck on that one.
Do you think a ME bootable floppy would be able to run your program?
I would like to use the prolinea as last resort as i dont want to mess to much with it, as I do have plenty of machines with IDE interfaces. But maybe there is limitations on what IDEs are compatible with the PS2 HDD?

If the above method would work, it would be a simple process.

Yes it will work on WINME (or DOS 8.0), at least a 286 machine with PC/MS DOS 3.30 are the min requirements

Masaw wrote on 2024-01-30, 11:28:

Yes it will work on WINME (or DOS 8.0), at least a 286 machine with PC/MS DOS 3.30 are the min requirements

Nah, scratch that. It has a proprietary HDD interface, so most likely it won’t be possible to move to to another computer.
(Ofcourse it’s proprietary)

Well, looks like I hit a hard stop with this unfortunately

Up to version 6.22 MS-DOS is still using plain 16-Bit 8086 instructions. It runs on XTs and ATs. And PS/2 machines.

MS-DOS 7 and up use 80386 instructions, because they were meant as a foundation to Windows 95.

PC-DOS is different. It kept using 8086 code much longer, also because it had no relationships to Windows.

Anyway, a simple MS-DOS 6.22 boot-up disk should be fine for most things.
It can handle the 2.88 MB floppy format for example, which was introduced in MS-DOS 5.0.

Likewise, years before, PC-DOS 3.30 had begun to support 1.44 MB format.

(Edit: It didn't support FAT16B yet, though.
Also known as Big FAT. PC-DOS 3.30 is being limited to partitions of 32 MB or smaller.)

That's why PC-DOS 3.30 is often recommended as a minimum by users.
Being released in '87 it's among the oldest DOSes to support things we are used to expect to work.
Many applications also have a DOS 3.0 or 3.2 minimum requirement, so 3.30 as a minimum is kind of a safe bet.

About anti-virus programs, there were many back then.
MS-DOS 6.x had MSAV included. IBM DOS 6.x had an equivalent, too. Central Point PC-Tools 7/8/9 and Symantec Norton Utilities had anti-virus software, too.
Then there's F-Prot..

But I don't know which ones do run on a plain XT.
Things like grapbics routines, hard disk caches or anti-virus programs had a desire for any kind of optimization.

It's just natural that their programmers wanted to make use of 286 instructions, if possible.
It's a miracle these programs didn't require 386 instructions already. The big user base of AT owners must have held them back, I suppose.

Edit: What comes to mind.. PC-Tools r4 had PC-Backup/PC-Restore program.
Later versions may still havd those two, too, not sure.

By using PC-Backup, it's possible to make a simple backup of the HDD (directory structure, files; not the boot sector). All it needs is a stack of floppies.
The last diskette will be the control disk, I vaguely remember.

Anyway, jt just came to mind. The old PC-Backup was merely two executables.
It could be copied to root directory on the hard disk and being run from there.

Not sure if it supported PS/2 PCs, already, though.

Edit: I've just double-checked. The following av programs run in PCem/XT machine mode.
Or rather, they crawl. With the 8088/16 Mhz setting.
With PC-CACHE running in background. Must try FASTOPEN next time.

- MS Antiv-Virus (MS-DOS 6.22)
- IBM AntiVirus/DOS (PC-DOS 6.3)
- Carmel Turbo Anti-Virus 8 ('91; newer releases ?)
- PC-Tools 7 VDefend (TSR, av guard)

Btw, the profram files in Norton Utilities 8 say "This program requires at least a 286 CPU".
Older releases may be more 8086 friendly, not sure. 🤷

Thank you for all this info, appreciate it!

As it looks to be not possible to move the HDD to another computer, the only way forward is a AW that will run on the setup as it sits. Which looks to be a long shot.
If anyone is aware, feel free to share!

Masaws one would have been so nice, just one executable that looked to be doing everything I needed.

Also, the tip for PC-backup is great, but not really looking for that right now. I did however want to explore the posibilities to export EVERYTHING on the drive and make a copy of the machine to run maybe on a VM or something like it.
But that is for another discussion, it would be awesome as there is a lot of nostalgia on that drive now 😁

So, we are still back to the original state. Need AV that runs on the current configuration.

Hey again!

Sorry did not see your updates before.

So it looks like the most viable options would be MSAV then maybe?
Do you know if it need a dos 6.22 install? Or can I make a bootable disk with it on? Can it even be run directly under my current DOS 3.3?
I guess i have 6.22 disks somewhere, any info on on what medias it was included?

Funny to think I lived for these machines back in the day but almost forgot everything about em. Been running Linux for the last 20+ years I feel so lost 😁