The time now is 12:15am, March 30, 2022. Tonight I turned the Amiga 500 computer on, switched on the LG VHS/DVD recorder ready to record an Amiga game tape, and attempted to play Pinball Dreams. However, I discovered a problem with the Pinball Dreams load sequence.
The Pinball Dreams Boot Disk loaded to the crack screen. When I pressed the left mouse button, the Amiga 500 attempted to load Pinball Dreams. Seconds into the load sequence, distorted graphics display in the middle of the screen. Those distorted graphics appear for a few frames, a blip of a second, before the screen displays a black screen.
Blink and you’ll miss it.
As the Amiga 500 hard drive blinks at a rapid rate of four clicks per second, the screen displays a “Please insert main disk in any drive” prompt in the middle of the screen.
A Bug Prevents Pinball Dreams From Loading
Pinball Dreams game files come on three floppy disks, labeled Boot Disk, Disk 1 and Disk 2. This part of the load sequence confused me because it is not clear whether “Main Disk” referred to the Pinball Dreams Boot Disk or Disk 1.
I inserted Pinball Dreams Disk One into the Amiga 500 disk drive. That didn’t work. The Amiga 500 disk drive kept clicking.
I inserted Pinball Dreams Disk Two. That didn’t work either.
Pinball Dreams loaded days after I purchased this second-hand Amiga 500 computer on November 30, 2020. This was odd game behavior. I tried to cast my mind back to any tricks used to load Pinball Dreams. Did the floppy disk become damaged? What could possibly have happened?
I took the Pinball Dreams Boot Disk from the Amiga 500 floppy drive to make a closer inspection. When I turned the floppy disk around, I noticed the write-protected tab was in an unlocked position.
The Pinball Dreams Boot Disk was write-enabled!
Lamer Exterminator Writes To Write-Enabled Floppy Disks
That was the moment the penny dropped. I knew that Pinball Dreams had been compromised by the Lamer Exterminator virus. I had trouble with Lamer Exterminator back in my Amiga 500 heyday as a fourteen-year-old in 1993. It was back!
I took the Pinball Dreams Boot Disk out of the Amiga 500 disk drive and inserted X-Copy. The X-Copy floppy disk had Virus Stomper V2 run on startup. Once loaded into Amiga 500 RAM memory, Virus Stomper V2 scanned system vectors and displayed the message “Virus Vectors Corrupt.”
I thought, “Damn. I’ve just nuked another game in my Amiga 500 collection,” because of viruses that have been hanging around in the bootblock for nearly thirty years.
Diagnosing Infected Floppy Disks
In an attempt to salvage Pinball Dreams, I copied that game onto a blank floppy disk using X-Copy. However, that backup plan failed too.
As I loaded the newly copied version of the Pinball Dreams Boot Disk, a loud hacking noise was heard coming from the Amiga 500 disk drive.
“Arrgh-arrgh. Arrgh-arrgh.”
The hacking disk drive took me back to 1993. I knew the reason the disk drive sounded like a broken table saw is because the Lamer Exterminator virus or some other computer virus had written itself onto the disk and infected one or more blocks on the disk. Whenever the disk drive reaches the infected block, the hacking disk drive noise can be heard.
Lamer Virus Infects Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge
After my failed attempts to resuscitate Pinball Dreams, I tried instead to play Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge. I also played that game in the days after I purchased this second-hand Amiga 500 computer. I had taken screenshots of the gameplay in 2020. So Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge worked in 2020. When I booted the disk again tonight, the hacking disk drive sound could be heard again.
I realized that the Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge disk must have become infected by a virus as well. The signature of the Lamer Exterminator virus was now detected on two separate Amiga 500 games. That was a dampener to my otherwise mellow nocturnal vibe.
It’s a shame that the virus on the Amiga 500 floppy disks can so easily corrupt floppy disks that have their write-protected tab down to allow disks to be written to.
Losing Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge a few months back to the Lamer Exterminator virus was unfortunate. I do still have over 220 original floppy disks with 72 Amiga games and 24 Amiga software disks, so the loss of one playable game is not the end of the world.
Losing Pinball Dreams tonight stung, but it gives me another incentive to invest in a GoTek drive so that I can find a way to install ADF copies of disks over the disks in my collection that have been infected by the Lamer Exterminator virus and other viruses over time.
I would love to increase the number of game titles in my Amiga 500 floppy disk catalog so that I can continue to explore more Amiga games than I could afford as a fourteen-year-old kid back in 1993. That is a task for another day.
Diary Of A Mad Chaos is a daily diary written from March 1996 until today, of which individual books and book series have been created, namely “The Lost Years” an exploration of young, entwined love, the “Wubao In China (猎艳奇缘)” book series which provides an extensive comparative analysis of the cultural differences between Eastern and Western societies, and the book titled “Foreigner (华人)” an exploration of race relations in Australia.
