I'm beginning to love this thread! Thanks - and don't forget BRAIN............. 1987, I think the first or one of the first.
And one of the most prolific boot viruses, FORM, with (insert nasty word) to corrin or similar message, probably a jilted boyfriend wrote that one from the message hidden in the code.
CIH - man, generated a lot of myths and wives tales of all these infected BIOSs, when in reality, ONLY certain BIOS from a certain BIOS maker in Korea could be impacted! It's impact was thus limited, but suddenly we got dozens of calls from folks really thoroughly convinced that their BIOS was now totally infected with a virus and it was spreading fast.
Too many "viruses" were more FICTION than fact back then. Rumors of monitors, video cards and modems totally BLOWN TO BITS by the latest virus. Then come along the SPOOFs, or chain letters warning of the next "big one" that CNN and Microsoft were warning there was no known protection from. Yeah, right, give me a break.
I recall when loveletter hit us - we broke the code before most others did and found protection and prevention for it, but not before it did a lot of damage. Further, when we were able to show how it got in and who opened it first (a company OFFICER!!) she so thoroughly denied it, that it became a politically hot issue in the company and IT was told "drop it, she said she didn't so she didn't".
IF my floppies from the 90's are any good, I've got a box of several disks infected with various viruses - several boot viruses, several EXE/COM infectors. I bet those floppies are shot from sitting around, but it was quite a collection I had. Some were rather obscure, from the former Soviet Union as our folks traveled a lot over there and brought back infections that only a Russian AV product could detect and remove! Seriously!
And then there were the years that a certain fellow associated with a certain AV product (not Symantec!!) became the big "cryer of wolf" warning us of impending doom each March (can you figure that one out?), or each time the "next big one" was to hit. We all got to the point we laughed and mocked these warnings of doom for all.