Wayne,
Boy am I glad I didn't work for you! :-)...
My favorite trick is doing the following & clearing the screen
:IF 0=1 THEN
The results can be humorous...:
:if 0=1 then
*** EXPRESSION FALSE: COMMANDS IGNORED UNTIL MATCHING ELSEIF/ELSE/ENDIF
:showjob
:exit
:bye
:endif
*** RESUME EXECUTION OF COMMANDS
RAT
_______________________________________________________________________
Rich Trapp "RAT"
Managed Business Solutions [log in to unmask] http://www.mbsnav.com
Assigned to Design Automation Support at Agilent Technologies
Telnet or 970-679-2221 [log in to unmask] Loveland, CO USA
_______________________________________________________________________
-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne Brown [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 10:15 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OT: HP3000 virus (was: I LOVE YOU **** VIRUS)
This isn't a virus, but it's another example of having fun with a mysterious
HP3000 problem...
In the late 1980s I got (from an HP class instructor!) a copy of a Pascal
program that would impersonate the Command Interpreter. It would throw out
a
colon prompt and sit there innocently, waiting for someone to key something
in.
Some commands would be passed through to the real CI and processed normally;
some would seem to work, but give weird results; and some would result in
funny
mesages being returned to the user. The scariest was LISTF. It would
always
tell you that no files were found. It's a little disconcerting to do LISTF
@[log in to unmask]@ and find no files!
Anyway, I modified it slightly (to add a few customized behaviors of my
own),
compiled it, and ran it on the console of one of our systems when the
operators
weren't looking. A little later, one of them called me and said one of the
3000s was not working correctly. As a good System Manager should, I of
course
investigated immediately. Now one of the nice features of this program was
that
it would count the number of times the RETURN key was pressed and then
terminate
after a certain number. (I had it set to ten.) The operators had already
tried
several commands, so I just hit RETURN and held it down long enough to get
out
of the program (and scroll the END OF PROGRAM message off the screen).
"Hmmm,
no problem getting colons here... let's try a few things... nope, I don't
see
anything wrong." Then I left the room -- but not before starting the
program
running on another console.
It took a couple of days of doing this off and on before the operators
finally
noticed that the "problems" only happened after I'd been in the room, and
disappeared as soon as I tried to "investigate." I told them this was my
revenge for all those times they'd called me in the middle of the night for
"problems" that turned out to be simple operator errors. :-)
Wayne
"TRAPP,RICH (Non-A-Loveland,ex1)" <[log in to unmask]> on 05/05/2000
09:37:57 AM
Please respond to "TRAPP,RICH (Non-A-Loveland,ex1)"
<[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
cc: (bcc: Wayne Brown/Corporate/Altec)
Subject: OT: HP3000 virus (was: I LOVE YOU **** VIRUS)
Randy,
Technically speaking, you're right. In college, a couple friends of mine
read an article in a mid-1980's BYTE magazine about viruses & proceeded to
write one for the HP3000. It was harmless and didn't propagate to other
machines, but it did lead to some interesting questions.
They somehow renamed "TERMINATE" in SL.PUB.SYS and put they're own version
which did some random calculation (based on the life cycle of a real virus)
and printed "The VIRUS Lives!!!" just before it called the real "TERMINATE"
routine. This would not occur at every time a program ended, but it would
increase as the week progress until after a certain number of days, it would
happen all the time.
They "fun" came into play because Art (hehe) and I, were not in the loop,
but were doing tech support for the students. When someone said that
they're program printed "The VIRUS Lives!!!", we (being good trouble
shooters) would ask them to do it again...and of course it wouldn't. By
the end of the week, it happened more & more often. I finally was able to
snag the code off a backup tape (still have it around somewhere).
Eventually the perpetrators removed the code. We all had a good laugh.
The CS prof thought it was very creative to emulate a real virus appear to
"spread" as time went on. Too bad the folks doing this now days are more
malicious...
RAT
_______________________________________________________________________
Rich Trapp "RAT"
Managed Business Solutions [log in to unmask] http://www.mbsnav.com
Assigned to Design Automation Support at Agilent Technologies
Telnet or 970-679-2221 [log in to unmask] Loveland, CO USA
_______________________________________________________________________
-----Original Message-----
From: Randy Keefer [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 6:23 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: I LOVE YOU **** VIRUS
Isn't it wonderful that there has never been a "virus" on an HP3000?
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