45678,02,05/27/92,BILL MATTSON,BOB LUND
R/6809/FLEX/FOR SALE,
Hi, Bob. Re your 6809 machine...call me at 708-665-9525 in the evening
about it and how much you might want for it. Thanks...
45679,03,05/27/92,ARCADY KHOTIN,WARD CHRISTENSEN
R/HELLO FROM RUSSIA,
Thanks, Ward , for quick return. It's a pity you are in no mood to write
long messages... Thanks anyway, I understand.
Best regards, Arcady
45778,16,10/06/92,ROY LIPSCOMB,CLIFF SHARP
R/GOOF-PROOFING SYSTEMS,
Cliff, my understanding is that DOS 5 does not require that IBM.SYS and
IBM.BIO reside in the first data clusters on the disk, nor that their
directory entries be the first on the disk.  So what you thought was
"skillful damage" may have not been so at all.	The real test would be
whether those two files were listed anywhere elsewhere in the directory.

This is not to belittle the "hacker pandemic."	A salesman at Elektek says
that people try almost daily to crash the store's demo computers, or erase
files from them.

I'm not clear about the setup at the library you describe.  Are you saying
that the public computers are equiped with a hard disk, but that patrons
are not supposed to have access to them?  If so, I would consider a
hardware solution:  Disable the hard disk by means of a lock-switch.  If
you opt instead for a software solution, I would think the computers would
be vulnerable to any patron who brought his own boot diskette.
45779,15,10/06/92,CLIFF SHARP,ROY LIPSCOMB
R/GOOF-PROOFING SYSTEMS,
   Well, the IBMBIO.COM and IBMSYS.COM files (?) were definitely missing
from the directory.  I had had occasion to look at their directory
previously with DEBUG and noted that they were, indeed, the first two
entries in the directory, and occupied the first clusters on that drive.
That's why I say that whoever did this deed did it very skillfully, since
cluster 2 (which used to belong ot IBMBIO.SYS) now belonged to the DOS
directory.
   Since the patrons are indeed allowed access to the hard drives, we
can't just disable them.  What I've settled on for the nonce is to remove
ATTRIB.COM from the drives, and use my own program to make the necessary
programs write-protected.  But your ideas are VERY much appreciated, as
are those of the other people I haven't yet responded to.
   I suppose the best idea is to get them a pair of 21 MB tape backups,
by donation if possible, and enable them to restore the system to its
pre-cracker condition...
45878,07,11/09/92,ROY LIPSCOMB,WARD & BILL & TONY
COMMAND.COM,
The variations of COMMAND.COM have forced me to give up on trying to find
the errorlevel byte in each.  What I've done instead is create a TSR that
will intercept all program terminations, and save a copy of the result
code. A non-TSR copy of the same utility can then retrieve the latest result
code on demand and then display it.  (Useful for debugging and development
of both programs and *.BAT files.)
Thanks for all your responses.
45879,15,11/09/92,ROY LIPSCOMB,WARD & ALL
WIERD PROBLEM SOLVED.,
I recently installed DOS 5.0 on my original IBM AT (1984 BIOS).  It
worked fine except for one peculiar problem:  It wouldn't boot from
a 3.5" drive, even though I transferred the system to the diskette
as specified in the DOS manual.  "Big deal," you say; "the BIOS is
too old."  That's what a techie at the store where I bought DOS 5.0
said.  The only thing is, DOS 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 would all boot from
a 3.5" diskette under the same hardware configuration!	Even tech
support at Microsoft was baffled.
  Turns out the problem was the boot sector on the diskette.  For
some reason, the disk parameter block (which describes the diskette
format to the ROM-BIOS during a boot and also at other times) had
one bad parameter:  The hidden sectors value.  Instead of the 0000
which is normal for diskettes, it had a value of 8000!	Don't know
how that value got there; but changing it solved the boot problem--
and hasn't caused any other problems yet (knock wood).
45978,05,12/29/92,ALEX ZELL,STEVE MOYZIS
HELP,NONO
There is no one here who answers to the label "sysop."	Ward
Christensen runs this BBS.  You are welcome to address him as "Ward."
Did you read the Welcome message when you logged on?  Did you try
typing "h" or "help" or "help keywords" at the prompt.	Capture the
welcome message ("W" at the prompt) and read it carefully.
45979,04,12/30/92,WARD CHRISTENSEN,ANDY SHAPIRO
R/DISK CLEANUP TIP,
  Ah, I see.  But I'm moving only ONE directory to that directory's
\unused directory.  Thus no naming convention dup problems can occur.
Thanks for the explanation.
  I use aliases a lot, too!
yte in each.  What I've done instead is create