September 15th, 1995 - Pump's Latest News:
Recently somebody posted a message to the alt.bin.warez.mac and some comp.sys.mac.* usenet groups that Pump destroys data and that it is rumoured to be a virus or trojan horse.
Data loss can almost never be fully explained. It could ofcourse be blamed on any other program that this person was using. A reasonably large number of people, amongst myself, use Pump for weeks or months without any problems. But I remind you here to make backups, just in case.
Concerning the virus/trojan horse issue, the following. When I became aware of MaxRAM for older versions of RAM Doubler®, I was a bit annoyed that I could not use it with my 1.5.1 version.
When I did find Pump on a German BBS (Big Mac in Frankfurt) and started to use it, it worked some miracles for me. When I had a look whether it was available on the net, it appeared not to be. In the readme file the author did not forbid distribution so I decided to put it on my new home page as a way to lure people to my pages and to have something to give back to these people.
After encouraging comments from some people, I did send it to the info-mac moderators for inclusion in their archives. However, somehow when they received it and converted it into an application (I sent it BinHex'ed in an e-mail message), its creator (the 4-byte code that tells the Finder what files belong to this program) got changed to the creator of Eudora (CSom), the e-mail program that I (and probably the info-mac moderators) use.
As a result when PUMP.SIT.HQX is downloaded from an info-mac mirror and de-BinHex'ed the Finder will sometimes change some icons of files belonging to Eudora, since the Finder thinks these files now belong to PUMP.SIT. The icons get changed to generic icons since Pump does not include icons (it is a quick hack without frills).
No data is changed whatsoever; it is just the icons that change. When subsequently PUMP.SIT is unstuffed to the PUMP application, the application has the proper creator (Pump).
When the PUMP.SIT file is deleted and the desktop rebuild (by starting the Mac with the option and command keys pressed until the Mac asks you whether you really want to do this), all is repaired and the changed icons will change back to their previous state.
It is indeed true that there are viruses on the Mac that change creators/icons, so the alarm raised by this user was a good thing in itself. He did however also claim that data-loss occurred and that that was caused by the trojan horse Pump. There is no proof whatsoever that Pump is such a thing. I tried Disinfectant 3.6 and Virex and both detect nothing wrong.
It is my firm belief that Pump is not a virus or a trojan horse. It is a worthwhile hack that can mean that every now and then your Mac can do more with limited memory. If you do use Pump you are on your own. Crashes do occur; it's a fact of life (did somebody say Norton Speed Disk?)
In the meantime I did upload a new copy to an info-mac moderator to replace the current copy. Also I doublechecked the copy on the previous page. When that page is saved as text by your WWW browser, its creator will probably be 'ttxt'. If you de-BinHex the file, you immediately will get the Pump application with the creator 'Pump'. It should not change any data at this stage on your harddisk (it has not been run yet). If you run the Pump application it will patch the (hidden) RAM Doubler init file and also then no changes to icons or anything else should take place. If something weird does happen and you are pretty sure it can be blamed on Pump, let me know!
Now, if you still want Pump (I would) go back and get it. If not, I do understand your position.
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