VOGONS


First post, by sangokushi

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I recently bought a Texas Instruments Travelmate 4000m Color (486-50MHz) . Before I install any games to the laptop, I would like to scan the hard drive for virus.
I google searched and several companies offer free antivirus rescue bootable cd. However, I am not sure if these programs will run on 486 hardware.
Does someone know where can I download a good free antivrus rescue disc?
Thanks!

Reply 4 of 15, by Caluser2000

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Does your 486 laptop support booting from CD?

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 6 of 15, by Caluser2000

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sangokushi wrote on 2021-10-30, 18:33:
Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-10-30, 09:49:

Does your 486 laptop support booting from CD?

I think I can create a boot floppy to access the CDROM drive?

And I will check out f-prot for dos

Yip.

The PLop boot manager will boot from CD if the system does not natively.I've use it a few times, using an older version, booting Damn Snall Linux on a 486.

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 7 of 15, by dr_st

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What OS are you going to run on that laptop?
Aren't you planning to format the hard drive?
Are you afraid of some nasty virus so deeply embedded that a low-level format won't rid you of it?
And you think some random bootable Antivirus CD is going to find it for you?
A bootable antivirus CD made in 2021 will detect viruses targeting an operating system from 1996?
Is there a genuine point to this exercise?

https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/ - Random content on hardware, software, games and toys

Reply 8 of 15, by jakethompson1

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sangokushi wrote on 2021-10-30, 18:33:
Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-10-30, 09:49:

Does your 486 laptop support booting from CD?

I think I can create a boot floppy to access the CDROM drive?

And I will check out f-prot for dos

Yes, F-Prot was one of the last DOS antiviruses.
What OS do you want to run on the laptop? Is it even what is running on it now?
Setting it up could be half the fun.
SPEEDSYS has an option to wipe hard drives I believe, by the way, and would fit nicely on a DOS boot floppy so no mucking around trying to convince a 486 to boot from CD. I've had mixed success with those tools--sometimes they work, sometimes they just lock up the machine.

Reply 9 of 15, by sangokushi

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jakethompson1 wrote on 2021-10-30, 21:54:
Yes, F-Prot was one of the last DOS antiviruses. What OS do you want to run on the laptop? Is it even what is running on it now? […]
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sangokushi wrote on 2021-10-30, 18:33:
Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-10-30, 09:49:

Does your 486 laptop support booting from CD?

I think I can create a boot floppy to access the CDROM drive?

And I will check out f-prot for dos

Yes, F-Prot was one of the last DOS antiviruses.
What OS do you want to run on the laptop? Is it even what is running on it now?
Setting it up could be half the fun.
SPEEDSYS has an option to wipe hard drives I believe, by the way, and would fit nicely on a DOS boot floppy so no mucking around trying to convince a 486 to boot from CD. I've had mixed success with those tools--sometimes they work, sometimes they just lock up the machine.

The laptop has DOS/Windows 3.11 now.
I tried to not wipe hard drive because I don't have copy of the original drivers/applications

Is this the correct URL for downloading F-Prot? Looks the company no longer exists.
https://archive.org/details/freesoftwarefordos_antivir_fprot

Reply 10 of 15, by Horun

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Yes it will work but not the newest definintions....
The last update to sign2.def in 2009 is 15Mb but that one at archive org is 2006 and 5.5Mb.
Keropi posted the last DOS version 3.16f and the last definition update of 2009, the very last and best of F-Prot for DOS.
Re: Best DOS antivirus?
Also can be found here: http://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/antivirus_utilities.php
I suggest Keropi's post
edit: fixed boo-boo 2 🤣 (where is yogi ?)

Last edited by Horun on 2021-10-31, 02:55. Edited 1 time in total.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 11 of 15, by Caluser2000

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dr_st wrote on 2021-10-30, 20:07:
What OS are you going to run on that laptop? Aren't you planning to format the hard drive? Are you afraid of some nasty virus so […]
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What OS are you going to run on that laptop?
Aren't you planning to format the hard drive?
Are you afraid of some nasty virus so deeply embedded that a low-level format won't rid you of it?
And you think some random bootable Antivirus CD is going to find it for you?
A bootable antivirus CD made in 2021 will detect viruses targeting an operating system from 1996?
Is there a genuine point to this exercise?

That was certainly uncalled for dude.

The OP may well want to learn about older software used on older systems.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 12 of 15, by retardware

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dormcat wrote on 2021-10-30, 09:20:

If I were you I'd take out its HDD and scan it with a modern or near-modern (WinXP or later) computer.

Well I thought Win XP is much more dangerous than DOS/Win 3.1.

But yes, there are virii on DOS, yes.
I learnt this by a friend calling me in 1987 because he thought his computer is defective because the characters were falling down the screen.
🤣! As a technician I immediately saw this could not be a hardware defect.
I took an infected file on diskette and disassembled it.
It was easy to write a scanner that recognized the signature of the Blackjack virus and isolated it by renaming the infected files.

What about just plugging the HDD into a Linux computer (maybe using an USB-IDE adapter), zipping it and then sending the zip file to virustotal ?
I wonder, will it still recognize these ancient virii?

I'd suggest to keep bugres and fakefrmt, though 😁
(Well, Windows 10 refuses to copy these files, complaining these are bad programs... awesome! Maybe Windows Defender can also be used for detection of DOS virii?)

Reply 13 of 15, by dormcat

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retardware wrote on 2021-10-31, 02:46:
Well I thought Win XP is much more dangerous than DOS/Win 3.1. […]
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dormcat wrote on 2021-10-30, 09:20:

If I were you I'd take out its HDD and scan it with a modern or near-modern (WinXP or later) computer.

Well I thought Win XP is much more dangerous than DOS/Win 3.1.

But yes, there are virii on DOS, yes.
I learnt this by a friend calling me in 1987 because he thought his computer is defective because the characters were falling down the screen.
🤣! As a technician I immediately saw this could not be a hardware defect.
I took an infected file on diskette and disassembled it.
It was easy to write a scanner that recognized the signature of the Blackjack virus and isolated it by renaming the infected files.

What about just plugging the HDD into a Linux computer (maybe using an USB-IDE adapter), zipping it and then sending the zip file to virustotal ?
I wonder, will it still recognize these ancient virii?

I'd suggest to keep bugres and fakefrmt, though 😁
(Well, Windows 10 refuses to copy these files, complaining these are bad programs... awesome! Maybe Windows Defender can also be used for detection of DOS virii?)

As if I didn't know the existence of DOS virii. 😅 I still have the 1996 shareware version of GGreat ZLOCK Super; too bad the company went defunct / reconstructed in 2010.

Like you said, "maybe using an USB-IDE adapter," the native support of USB external storage devices and Microsoft Management Console (MMC) make WinXP or later much easier to access and partition an external drive than using DOS or Win9x. Sure, most if not all modern OS could also handle the task, but since "the laptop has DOS/Windows 3.11 now" I'd say keeping it with MS Windows would be the least problematic method.

Reply 14 of 15, by zapbuzz

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i haven't seen a dos virus since 1997 and although i be inclined to go modern i do wonder if they have dos definitions given not many use dos anymore. fprot is going out of updates last i heard, be good idea to keep a final bundle with the final definitions.

Reply 15 of 15, by Caluser2000

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F-Secure, the maker of F-Prot for Dos's producer, is still going- https://www.f-secure.com/en

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉