232 Hale Road WIDNES Cheshire WA8 8QA Dear Club Members, 17/9/90 First, let me take this opportunity to introduce myself properly. I am Dave Edwards, supplier extraordinaire of DOC files to the universe, and supplier (if my palms are suitably greased) of myriad other baubles & trinkets too. Those having already heard about the wonders of PowerWindows from Mark will probably want more information. Well, here it is. Sad to say, I don't have the actual address of the company concerned (after virus activity scribbled all over my contact data files-more of this later) but I still have, for those rich enough to have a modem, free telephone access and no worries about dialling the USA, their 24-hour online BBS number. It is: 010 01 214 241-4225 the first five digits being the IDD prefix for the USA. Those able to use the BIX service etc., can get in touch with: Martin Murray Development Director INOVATRONICS, Inc. CIS: 73270, 3600 BIX: mmurray for further information (and if you obtain Inovatronics' postal address by this means, send it to me pronto!) The major motivation for writing this letter is a plea for help. I have already mentioned briefly the activity of viruses being responsible for eating holes in my contacts data files. This will teach me not to try using Amiga discs as a FiloFax on the cheap (well, 40p per disc from some people as opposed to £29.95 for a bundle of paper-wouldn't you?). Well, the same virus (which has tentatively been identified by VirusX 3.2 as something called the Lamer Exterminator) has scribbled all over several important GenAm include files that I was using to continue the process of compiling DOC files for the Club. Without them, the Layers library will have to remain undocumented in my own inimitable fashion, as will some of the devices and resources. So, if anyone out there has access to the following GenAm include files to replace my destroyed copies: include/graphics/layers.i please send them to the above address. In return, those wanting it will be given a FULL COMMENTED DISASSEMBLY of Exec in its entirety, sent to me by kind yet anonymous persons. Since this file is 300K long, and cannot be cop- ied by the AmigaDos COPY command to RAM: without expanded memory, this Club disc should also contain FCOPY, my own file copier that copies in sections of 100K size if the file is over 100K large, complete with the original fully commented source. The source is suitable as tutorial material. ONCE AGAIN, I SAY, READ THE COMMENTS IN THE SOURCE! Goodness knows how often I say this, & how often it gets ignored, the result being tears and in some cases even disc files scribbled all over irretrievably. If Jonathan Pacey is reading this letter, take note:I managed to salvage the exec.doc file and it is now available in uncorrupted form. But I am sad to say that I hadn't managed it in time to send your disc back! So you still have the old beaten-up version. The new version will wing its way to you via the Club discs in future. At some point I hope to salvage console.doc as well, which has been splurged all over by said Lamer Exterminator. Now for the offers! Another handy piece of software has come my way, the same software that allowed me to recover exec.doc (one of the Amiga dev- eloper files I mentioned in a previous letter), a disc sector viewer/editor called Sectorama. This is unfortunately not PD, so the copy I have sent for evaluation by Mark is probably not going to end up on the Club discs in fu- ture, but once I've salvaged my contacts files with it & the company address is available, I'll pass it on. A review of Sectorama appears elsewhere on the Club disc along with this letter. As for the Lamer Exterminator virus I have had problems with, two words of warning to ALL Club members. First, Lamer Exterminator is truly the most destructive virus I have encountered. Whereas IRQ is mainly of nuisance value, and difficult to shift too, Lamer Exterminator does something NASTY. It searches for a file to corrupt using the disc block structure, and then fills an entire randomly chosen sector used by the targetted file with the text "Lamer!" repeated until the sector is full. The use of Sectorama men- tioned above allowed me to discover this. Second, the authors of the dreaded Lamer Exterminator have done something VERY SNEAKY. They have taken versions of Steve Tibbett's VirusX (I think 3.3 is the one to watch) and embedded the Lamer Exterminator code within it. Hence, anyone using the VirusX 3.3 virus killer will in fact be increasing the infestation of their discs with Lamer Exterminator! I'm already trying to inform Steve Tibbett of this myself, but I suggest that any members possessing VirusX 3.3 send it to Steve Tibbett at the address below, and warn him by covering letter of the contents. That's it for now. See ya'll. Dave Edwards. P.S. Live fast, code hard & die in a beautiful way.