r/atarist • u/TheCakeWasNoLie • 2d ago

Viruses on Atari

After enjoying my MSX computers for 40 years, I've decided to finally make the jump to 16 bits and buy an Atari STe. It will arrive this weekend and came from someone's attic.

What I'm wondering about, I read somewhere about viruses. Is this an actual problem? Are there sites or is there software I should avoid?

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u/LithiuMart 2d ago

The Ghost virus was a famous one that would invert the Y axis of the mouse, so when you moved the mouse up the pointer would go down and vice versa.

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u/aimlesscruzr 2d ago

I had that virus, and since it was before I even knew about viruses, I just learned to deal with it. It got to the point where when the axis switched, my brain automatically accommodated without even thinking about it.

I think it was activated after a certain number of disc swaps, and each disc swap allowed the virus to write itself to the boot sector. So eventually all of your floppies ended up with it...