I’m glad to say that in all the years I have been using computers, I have only ever had one virus attack my systems. I can’t recall which particular virus it was, but it was on the Amiga and managed to infect several of my floppies before I discovered it. At the time it was easiest to just ditch the infected disks, though I think there was some crude “cleansing” tool which supposedly could have fixed them. Apart from that one virus though, I have been able to avoid viruses thanks to common-sense guidelines and using a virus scanners where possible.

I have, however, seen some particularly nasty infections, some of the most persistent being MS Word macro viruses. I was working in IT support in the mid to late 90’s when macro viruses started to appear. One of the early macro viruses was somehow introduced into our network and turned out to be a very difficult thing to eradicate. While we could clean all infected files on the network and on our users’ PCs, if someone had emailed an infected document, the virus could lie dormant for quite some time before reappearing and reinfecting everything again. In those days virus scanners couldn’t scan and clean email attachments until they were opened, so the virus could lie in wait for months at a time until someone opened an old document in their email and there would be another round of scanning/cleaning files.

Over the years virus scanners and viruses have become more and more sophisticated. To think, it all started from a silly prank on an Apple II!

Time to dig out some old magazines and re-read some of his material…

Then there are the sellers who try to rip buyers off. Take this guy for instance: $25 postage on a cassette! The most it would actually cost him is maybe $3-4 including a padded post bag.

Sometimes you just gotta laugh…

• Micro-KIM - A KIM-1 clone that appears to be reasonably true to the original, though with a few modifications and an added serial port
• Replica 1 - A replica of the original Apple, with a couple of “modern” enhancements (such as the option of a USB port)
• COSMAC Elf 2000 - A reproduction of the COSMAC Elf with some modern enhancements
• Roll your own PET 4032 - A PET 4032 clone based on the CS/A65 project
• Kenbak-1 Series 2 - A faithful reproduction of the original Kenbak-1
• Altair 8800 - A faithful reproduction of the original Altair 8800
• IMSAI Series 2 - Based on the computer that appears in War Games
• Sinclair ZX81 - Original Sinclair ZX81 kits - not a clone or a replica, but the real deal!
• Sinclair ZX80 clone - If you want to try building a ZX80 completely from scratch
• Jupiter Ace clone - Similar to the ZX80 clone above

I have a couple of the Sinclair ZX81 kits and will be ordering the Micro-KIM and Replica-1 kits shortly. As for the others, well I’d love to have them all, but can realistically see myself getting the COSMAC Elf and maybe a Kenbak. I’d love the Altair, but just can’t see myself being able to afford the cost.

Anyway, here’s a picture of the kit fully built (I will try to take some images of it in action ASAP):

So the action plan is:

1. Find a suitable shelving solution
2. Sort my current collection
3. Catalogue the collection electronically
4. ???
5. Profit?