[comp.virus] hardware

turtle@darkside.com (Fred Waller) (01/16/91)

Fridirik Skulasson (frisk@hi.hi.is) writes in response to an inquiry:
> >Is there any way to prevent a virus from infecting a hard disk when
> >you cold boot with an infected diskette in drive a: ?
>
> Not without additional hardware I'm afraid.  Any program run from

That's true, but the "additional hardware" can be as simple as a very
small spst switch wired across wire No. 6 of the HD controller ribbon
cable.  It will effectively stop ANY and ALL disk writes without
interfering with any other computer processes. Not even a DOS error
message will be generated.