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MKS_VIR - old dos anti-virus program freezes on dosbox

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First post, by krzysiobal

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Hi there,
There is a very old polish antivirus program (called MKS_VIR) for DOS. Its value is not that it detect viruses, because it was created in '90 and its databases are out of date, but because it has built-in virus lexicon. It consists of very good descriptions of many viruses. Those viruses created in the '80 and '90 (for DOS 1.0, 2.0, etc) had built-in speccial effects (like playing some songs on PC-Speaker, displaying various things on screen, rotating the font, etc) that were shown to the user for example on anniversaries. The examples of those demos are available to see in this program.

The author of this software was a tallented Polish programmer - Marek Sell (He is not alive now).

Howewer, running this program on DOSBOX fails - after running it tries to scan memory for the presence of viruses and hangs on the screen and waits forever. Is this a dosbox bug? I think this program can do some unconventional things with processor and/or memory so that might be the reason.

31_1296760813_thumb.png

Szukam wirusow zainstalowanych w pamieci operacyjnej komputera
>>METODA ALGORYTMICZNA<<

in translation from Polish means

Searching for virusses installed in computer memory
>>ALGORITHMIC METHOD<<

Im publishing this program for download.

regards[/img]

Attachments

  • Filename
    MKS.zip
    File size
    890.3 KiB
    Downloads
    1120 downloads
    File comment
    mks_vir
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 1 of 6, by krzysiobal

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Hello!
I found out accidentally that running this app with /m parameter skips the memory check and it runs!

However, there's one virus in the program's lexicon called `Deliver Stealth` and it demonstrates some kind of animation. Unfortunatelly it is glitchy in dosbox - looks like that:
99_1326971578.png
But it should be:
24_1326971578.png

Can any of dosbox's expert express their opinion?
This program definitely uses come non-conventional DOS methods for screen displaying.

(The background is filled with animating bars - they're changing colour from red to gray) However, in dosbox it is rather the whole background in one solid colours than bars and the big `DIGI POWER` text is glitched.

Reply 2 of 6, by keropi

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I remember a similar program found on a magazine here , 1992-1994 period... it had live examples like this one and I spent quite some time remembering what it was called 🤣
thanks for sharing this 😁

🎵 🎧 ⏳ ⚡ PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 3 of 6, by ripsaw8080

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The "DIGI POWER" part is rendered correctly when loading a video bios in DOSBox. The difference appears to be that INT 43h is pointing at the 8x8 font in mode 3 in real video bioses, but DOSBox's emulated video bios has it pointing at the 8x16 font. The RBIL does seem to suggest that DOSBox has it right, but it's not super clear, and the real bioses are evidence to the contrary. At any rate, it works correctly when DOSBox is modified to point the vector at its 8x8 font.

The color banding appears to be changing the palette in sync with video timing (horizontal retrace) such that bands appear. Not sure if DOSBox can handle that kind of thing. I know hal had to do some work to implement similar behavior for Jungle Hunt and Frogger in CGA.

Reply 4 of 6, by VileR

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the background scrolling bars effect works on SVN builds like MB6 / ykhwong's, if you set the config option linewise=true.

the text is still broken, however - screenshot attached...

Attachments

  • mks_002.png
    Filename
    mks_002.png
    File size
    7.01 KiB
    Views
    3702 views
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

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Reply 5 of 6, by ripsaw8080

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Yeah, 8x16 font data doesn't work too well when it's expecting 8x8 font data. The attached program changes INT 43h to what the program expects, if you really want to see it.

Attachments

  • Filename
    INT43.ZIP
    File size
    791 Bytes
    Downloads
    285 downloads
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 6 of 6, by VileR

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Oops, didn't notice your previous post before posting mine... I should've recognized those sliced-up 8x16 chars. 😀

confirmed - the TSR works fine.

Attachments

  • mks_003.png
    Filename
    mks_003.png
    File size
    7.24 KiB
    Views
    3673 views
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

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