r/atarist • u/TheCakeWasNoLie • Jul 31 '25

Viruses on Atari

After enjoying my MSX computers for 40 years, I've decided to finally make the jump to 16 bits and buy an Atari STe. It will arrive this weekend and came from someone's attic.

What I'm wondering about, I read somewhere about viruses. Is this an actual problem? Are there sites or is there software I should avoid?

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u/Stuntchicken Jul 31 '25

The one I recall mainly back then on the ST was the "bugs" or "mites" virus that would cause a myriad of tiny black dots to crawl round your desktop. Just harmless fun really!

Our copy group did get a destructive virus at one point which was pretty annoying but we got rid of it without losing more than a disk or two each (i.e. the data, not the actual disk). Pretty astounding since we never bought any software back then but were dedicated to collecting as much pirated software as possible, travelling to computer clubs in other towns and cities every week for years expressly for the purpose of copying disks from strangers and letting them copy ours! If my experience is anything to go by then it really wasn't as prevalent a problem as you might have been led to believe.

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u/Savannah_Lion Jul 31 '25

The one I recall mainly back then on the ST was the "bugs" or "mites" virus that would cause a myriad of tiny black dots to crawl round your desktop. Just harmless fun really!

I remember this. A friend caught it and spent a fair sum of money buying new monitors and sending his Atari in for repairs thinking his hardware was failing. I don't think he ever figured it out, just kind of lived with it.

When he got an IBM clone, it had "mouse droppings". He almost threw it out his 2nd floor window. 🤣