OK this no April fools joke, this is real.
Sometime ago jamjam sent me some scratched discs that he didn't want, that I said I would clean and dump, which I did do.
But one disc at least definitely wouldn't dump after cleaning had been done, which was weird, but thought nothing much of it, till about a week later, I happened to show a mate who isn't really in to computers but watches a lot of bullshit tv.
Anyway, can't remember how or why the subject was raised, but he said he heard about a virus that easts cd's literally, it lives on cd's like a parasite.
We had a look at the cd that jamjam sent me that wouldn't dump, and what it looked like was it had visible marks on the picture side, like someone had been drawing some sort of fractal graphics on the disc with a very fine tipped fountain pen. The marks were black, and were like little snail trails.
Anyway I decided to bin the disc in case any other discs caught the virus, I still didn't really believe it, until recently.
I got a batch of Jap PSX discs a little while ago of ebay, not looked after disc only, but one wouldn't dump, even though I gave it a good clean.
This also has black squiggly marks on it like jamjams but not as bad.
So I have scanned the disc, and found a scan from someone else who has the same disc.
At first I thought the black squiggles were part of the art, but they aren't because I got a scan of the disc of the net, and the one of the net has no marks like mine.
Look also how the marks go into the centre and get more random, this is definitely not part of the artwork.
The files are attached. Please look at them.
If you are a serious game collector this is quite worrying, all the more reason we get every single disc dumped before the virus spreads to every disc in the world.
This is like the AIDS of the CD world.
Please take a look at the scans, I am worried as I don't know how easy this virus can spread, and if it spreads easy, which I am preying it doesn't, and how long it takes before the virus becomes active on the newly infected disc. That's the real worry.
Now it has a proper surface scratch I done with a screwdriver, looks the same color, but look at the other black marks and how it goes really squiggly near the centre, trust me this is a virus that eats cd's. I am 100% sure.
The SPICE must flow.
every time. Like I did, but what if while touching something of mine it decided to live their, I could still have it passing it to every disc in my house potentially.