Mac OS 9 Antivirus?

I know norton systemworks still works well, and they even put out virus definition updates every month, and IIRC, when you install a copy, you get a years worth of definitions at least. I used to have a copy, but I just purged several dozen gigs of files off my B&W, including all my old Mac OS 9 software, because I simply don't need it anymore.

sorry, and good luck finding a copy.

-digital

iamdigitalman wrote:

I just purged several dozen gigs of files off my B&W, including all my old Mac OS 9 software, because I simply don't need it anymore.
-digital

Deleting OS 9 softwae is a crime in several countries, you know! Most of it is now 'Unobtainium' and soon will be missing from history. Don't you have any sympathy for old used, non-protected memory, non-premptive multitasking electrons!?!

I have been searching the web and downloading all the old OS 9 software I can find while it is still out there. During the time I had no working Mac (July 23, 2005 through February 9, 2008) much of it has disappeared into thin air!

Of course once I get my hands on a useful OS X version, I may care somewhat less, but preserving the past still seems like a good cause to me, just look at my website: Not updated since my PowerBook 3400 hard drive died in 2005! (I also have every page archived since October 1998 when I started it.)

I'm curious as to what the fears are? What viruses are out there waiting to waylay an unprotected OS 9? I've used Macs for almost twenty years and every time I ever ran a virus check using Virex or Norton nary a bug was found. Was I just lucky? You might want to be careful with Norton Systemworks as it implants a nasty little bug of its own called Norton Filesaver which you can't even edit out in a customized installation.

well, considering it was *technically* a pirated copy (I have a license, but the disk is unreadable), I did not want to get in to any trouble. Plus I refuse to discuss that here, mostly because we are not allowed to.

sorry, man.

-digital

Sorry, I'm missing something. What were you addressing in this last post? You did not want to get into trouble by doing...what? What was the "that" which isn't discussed? Pirated software?

no what I meant was this guy is looking to download it, and I was trying to clear it up that systemworks is *NOT* free software, and that downlaoding it is considered piracy, but I have, but only because I had a copy which did not work but had the license to run it.

Sorry for any confusion.

Old Norton can probably be bought on eBay for a nickel and a song. And I don't mean to demean Norton entirely. Disk Doctor has saved me on a few occasions (and messed me up entirely on others). I meticulously remove Filesaver right after installing Norton Utilities (I've described the procedure in other threads). SpeedDisk is a very good optimizer. And Norton Personal Firewall has always been one of the better Mac firewalls. Antivirus has so far, for myself, been a complete waste of money.

I am against piracy, but lot of this old software has not been available from, supported by or even cared about by the original manufacturers for years. I know there has been an effort for some time to get a law passed that software becomes public domain after seven years of non-support by the manufacturer, I think that is a good idea.

Similarly, many music artists are stipulating in their contracts nowadays that the original recordings return to the posession of the artist 10 years after release by the publisher.

But no, I am not downloading commercial software, just Shareware, Freeware, etc. that is still on the net.

One guy had an OS 8.6 utility disk ISO that had 700MB of such software on one of the torrents, but it also had a full copy of OS 8.6 on it. While I have OS 8.6 in my possesion, I still have some qualms about downloading something like that.

Oddly enough, the first real experience I ever had with a Macintosh, specifically a Macintosh floppy back around... gah, I don't know, 1990?, involved a virus. I was asked to convert a mailing list someone had put together in some Mac database program to a PC format. I took the floppy with the mailing list on it to the local Apple reseller so they could copy the file onto a PC disk for me. (After which I wrote a simple BASIC program to massage the data with.) They did, but also warned me the source disk had some dirt-common Mac virus on it.

Mac Virus FAQ

--Peace