PROTOCOL: ALT COMPRESSION: NONE CONNECT 2400/ARQ CBBS(R) 4.0.3b 03/08/93 01:53:14 Y/N: want CBBS "1st time user" info?^U ?^U ?^U ?n;ward;christensen;odraw;;fullc;piss Logging name to disk... You are caller 229102; next msg =46129; 381 active msgs. Prev. call 03/03/93 @ 23:17, next msg was 46120 Recording logon for next time. Use FULL? to check assignments ?^U ?xxxxx "Mine" command checking for msgs TO you, ^K to a >Function:?dir c:log;dir c:killed;dir summary;type-20 log,ward c;or;*;short LOG. 14 KILLED. 33 SUMMARY. 25 33:49,229067,1,WARD CHRISTENSEN,,2 03/04/93,19:30:45,229068,2,GARY HEILEMANN,Glenview/ IL,8 03/04/93,21:36:25,229069,2,BENJAMIN COHEN,,1 03/04/93,23:31:14,229070,2,BILL MATTSON,,3 03/04/93,23:40:03,229071,1,ROY LIPSCOMB,, E#46120, E#46121, E#46122,13 03/05/93,07:22:44,229072,2,CHAVALIN ARORA,Melrose Park/ IL,2 03/05/93,07:52:30,229073,1,AL HIGGINS,,5 03/05/93,08:36:25,229074,2,DONNIE STUHLMAN,, E#46123,5 03/05/93,11:49:53,229075,1,TINA BOWES,/Springfield/VA, 03/05/93,12:09:35,229076,2,DONALD DOCKMAN,,0 03/05/93,14:30:49,229077,2,JOE COZZI,Naperville/ IL,5 03/05/93,15:47:07,229078,2,DENNIS STAHL,,3 03/05/93,21:20:54,229079,2,SHARON GIBSON,cicero/il,1 03/05/93,21:33:34,229080,3,JOEL ALLEN,Ashille,4 03/05/93,23:45:21,229081,2,SAM KANDEL,,3 03/06/93,13:19:44,229082,2,ALEX ZELL,, E#46124, E#46125,3 03/06/93,16:29:41,229083,2,WARD CHRISTENSEN,, E#46126, E#46127,4 03/06/93,16:42:12,229084,2,ANDY SHAPIRO,, E#46128,8 03/06/93,18:18:52,229085,2,DAVID JOHNSON,,12 03/06/93,18:38:03,229086,2,BRETT INGLIS,elgin,4 03/06/93,23:10:38,229087,2,MURRAY ARNOW,,8 03/06/93,23:32:15,229088,2,BILL MATTSON,,1 03/06/93,23:49:16,229089,2,JOE GEORGE,Atlanta/ GA,6 ]Hello, friends! I've not called here in many years, for some odd reason your phone number popped into my head earlier this week and I thought I would drop off a note to congratulate the both of you on the 15th anniversary! Good work! Joe George jgeorge@whiffer.atl.ga.us JOE GEORGE, 03/07/93,00:35:08,229090,2,ANGIE REED,Keota Iowa,5 03/07/93,07:21:50,229091,2,DAVID GIBBS,,8 03/07/93,10:55:19,229092,2,ALEX ZELL,,2 ]ALEX ZELL,3 ]Msg 46123, "misdirected" message; "didn't realize the reply would go to you" suggests belief messages may have some of the characteristics of e-mail, perhaps even limited privacy. Chinet has not been responding. ALEX ZELL, 03/07/93,12:59:11,229093,2,BOB GEE,chicago/il,8 03/07/93,14:55:09,229094,2,WILLIAM KROHN,Hoffman Estates Il,4 03/07/93,17:00:54,229095,2,BERNARD GOLDLUST,,6 03/07/93,18:35:03,229096,2,MARTY MILLER,,4 03/07/93,20:40:29,229097,2,JOE JESSON,,10 03/07/93,22:44:17,229098,2,ROB KLEEMAN,,8 03/07/93,23:04:38,229099,2,DAVID MARTIN,, >Help: HAM,9 03/07/93,23:38:21,229100,2,JACOB EPPSTEIN,Highland Park,5 03/08/93,00:10:00,229101,2,BILL MATTSON,,1 03/08/93,01:53:18,229102,2,WARD CHRISTENSEN,, 46120 03/04/93 ROY LIPSCOMB => ALL: "FLASH: DAMAGE NOT FROM VIRUS!" 46121 03/04/93 ROY LIPSCOMB => ALL: "FLASH: DAMAGE (2)" 46122 03/04/93 ROY LIPSCOMB => WARD: "CBBS RETIRING?" 46123 03/05/93 DONNIE STUHLMAN => WARD CHRISTENSEN: "MESSAGE MISTAKE" 46124 03/06/93 ALEX ZELL => ROY: "CBBS" 46125 03/06/93 ALEX ZELL => ALL: "PRIVACY" 46126 03/06/93 WARD CHRISTENSEN => ROY LIPSCOMB: "R/CBBS RETIRING?" 46127 03/06/93 WARD CHRISTENSEN => ALEX ZELL: "R/PRIVACY" 46128 03/06/93 ANDY SHAPIRO => ALL DESKJET USERS: "CHEAP INK" - End of summary - Retrieving flagged msgs: C skips, K aborts. Msg 46120 is 30 line(s) on 03/04/93 from ROY LIPSCOMB to ALL re: FLASH: DAMAGE NOT FROM VIRUS! Today I encountered a hair-raising problem with my D drive (a hard- drive partition). There was a sudden epidemic of invalid clusters on my D drive, afflicting about thirty or forty files. When I tried to restore the files from backups, other files got damaged and I observed further trauma, an outbreak of cross-linking. After wrestling to restore the damaged files for several hours, I finally despaired enough to think more about the symptoms. I noticed a crucial clue, which had been I ignoring in my panic: When I ran CHKDSK to check my progress with the repairs, CHKDSK would always start out by displaying the message, "possible non-DOS disk: Continue anyway (y/n)?" I decided to rev up a disk-sector editor, and poked around in the control areas of drive D. When I did, I could find only one anomaly: The first four bytes of both FATs were peculiar. Those bytes are normally F8 FF FF FF; but on my D drive, those bytes were 2D DD 9F C3. As a test, I restored those bytes to their usual values, then ran CHKDSK. CHKDSK no longer reported "possible non-DOS disk." I was then able to replace the bad files without inflicting new damage, and the drive once again operated normally. After solving this problem, I recalled that in the past year I had encountered a similar problem. One of the hard-disk partitions had suddenly become balky, refusing to operate normally with some common utilities that had presented no problems previously. I finally tracked that problem down; the first byte of the FAT had been altered e strange value. As in the present case, when I restored AT signature to its normal value, the problem was cured. (Continued next message) Msg 46121 is 27 line(s) on 03/04/93 from ROY LIPSCOMB to ALL re: FLASH: DAMAGE (2) It's popular to suspect viruses as the cause of most (if not all) unexplained file disruptions nowadays. In those incidents where a virus is not found, well, it be a new type that at present escapes detection. Was this damage caused by a virus? I really doubt it. Anyone who wants to scramble a FAT would hardly stop after changing less than five bytes. My guess is that the damage was caused by some bug in DOS or in some utility program- a bug perhaps that shows itself only under very unusual circumstances. However, this kind of diagnosis doesn't make headlines. ("Man finds data loss was not due to virus!") The result is that viruses have become the scapegoats for all sorts of mischief (kind of like like Communists were in the '50s). So is there a moral to this story? Yes: If your hard drive or files seem to have gotten damaged or scrambled for no obvious reason, try checking the first four bytes of the FAT. (In fact, it may be a good idea to check them now, while everything is functioning normally, so that you'll know exactly how to restore them if they do go bad.) You may have to boot off a diskette to do this, if the hard drive is no longer bootable; so keep an emergency boot diskette handy that contains a disk-sector editor (and other diagnostic and repair tools). P.S. As noted above, the value that overlaid the FAT signature was 2D DD 9F C3. Does this give any clue to what caused the overwriting? Msg 46122 is 03 line(s) on 03/04/93 from ROY LIPSCOMB to WARD re: CBBS RETIRING? It'd would really be sad to see this trailblazing institution disappear. Are there alternatives? Could others take over the job of sysop, so you'd be free for other more rewarding pursuits? Msg 46123 is 02 line(s) on 03/05/93 from DONNIE STUHLMAN to WARD CHRISTENSEN re: MESSAGE MISTAKE Sorry about the midirected message. I guess that I saw Ed's name and didn't realize the reply would go to you. Msg 46124 is 07 line(s) on 03/06/93 from ALEX ZELL to ROY re: CBBS Not to worry, Roy. You know that on occasion, when the spirit moves him, Randy mutters threats about giving up CBBS causing Ward and a couple of his loyal assistant operators to beat him back into some semblance of sanity and CBBS continues its existence. [Did I glimpse the word "sysop" in your posting? As the owner and custodian of the original CBBS machine you must recall that you used a word that could be cause for immediate removal of the offending message? tsk tsk] Msg 46125 is 08 line(s) on 03/06/93 from ALEX ZELL to ALL re: PRIVACY An earlier message leads me to believe that some visitors here may not realize that CBBS is a *public* bulletin board and that there is no *mail* function here. All postings are readable by everyone. There is no privacy here, and no private messages can be sent or read - with two minor exceptions. Ward can *flash* a message that can be read only by the caller to whom it is addressed; Ward and his assistants can read comments left upon logging off, at the function. Msg 46126 is 09 line(s) on 03/06/93 from WARD CHRISTENSEN to ROY LIPSCOMB re: R/CBBS RETIRING? Why do you say retiring? I posted nothing. I gotta move toward converting to "C" - maybe with my 12 extra days vacation IBM gave me, I will use that time. CBBS recently added external Bernoulli's for backup, and I JUST installed the HST back on it, I don't see any particular "its dying" indications. Matter of fact, next week I get a free flight to San Francisco, to receive the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (Mitch Kapor started it) Pioneer award - along with the founders of the Internet, the Trailblazer modem, etc. Msg 46127 is 02 line(s) on 03/06/93 from WARD CHRISTENSEN to ALEX ZELL re: R/PRIVACY That's a g;y not a g,y. Heh. Do you know what msg implied this was private? Msg 46128 is 11 line(s) on 03/06/93 from ANDY SHAPIRO to ALL DESKJET USERS re: CHEAP INK Well, not cheap, REALLY, but close. INMAC (the company everyone seems to love to hate, including me) has a deal on high-capacity black printheads for the DJ series - their catalog says "buy two for $47.50, get one free!" Well, after tax & shipping it was $55, but that's still pretty good for 3 high capacity units, and they arrived the next day. That works out to about $18.30 per cartridge, tax & shipping included; I don't know what they go for in Chicago, but the same cartridge would cost $38 EACH at our college bookstore. My advice? Order a few and stock up! dup. chars. >Function:?