Goatse Rescue Floppy

Over 100,000 satisfied customers1.

Goatse Rescue Floppy is a useful tool to keep in your pocket at all times. You'll be able to show the infamous hello.jpg on practically any IBM-PC compatible computer using removable media. You can use the floppy drive, the CD/DVD-ROM drive, a USB memory stick or even network boot if available.

Goatse Rescue Floppy is fully customizable. Any JPEG can be shown on boot or you can replace the image viewer with any payload.

Competition is fierce. Take the Goatse Challenge™:

Paid link: A Homeopathic Solution For Your Computer Woes

goatsefloppy-1.1

Update Jul 29th, 2005: This update mainly makes it easier to build the floppy (and the ISO and netboot images) and an easy possibility to customize the image. Included in the package are the source code files and a tool to convert (almost) any JPEG image to raw data to be used with the floppy. Read readme.txt for the needed tools and libraries. The actual code and data on the floppy are more or less the same.

Thanks to Tokachu for some useful help. Read more help and info below. Should compile on most systems with the needed tools.

Note: The alternative bootsector code is needed on some machines (including Bochs). The original bootsector fails to load for some reason.

Additional tools you might need:

goatsefloppy-1.0

Update Oct 8th, 2004: Answers to common questions: No, it's not a virus or something to permanently cause harm to the computer it's booted from, that's why I included the source code. The idea of defiling computer stores was not my idea. To change the image that is shown on the screen, just change the raw image (hello.raw) and include a palette too. You can make those with probably any program meant for editing graphics and that is not MS Paint. Then just type make in the directory (provided you have all the needed programs). As you can see, hello.com is just a standard MS-DOS 16-bit executable (however it's not an .exe), you could practically replace it with any .com executable. Also, some sites keep claiming this is somehow related to humor. I dissent.

Usage: Write floppy.img on a 1.44 MB floppy (using for example rawrite or dd or WinImage or whatever), reboot with the mentioned floppy, gaze in awe. Or, use the provided .iso to burn a nice credit card sized goatse-cd.

How to defile your hard drive (thanks andyn): dd if=floppy.img of=/dev/hda

Requirements: x86 (probably needs a 286), MCGA (mode 0x13), make and nasm for building the image

Files included in the archive

  floppy.asm - used to build the raw floppy image, includes the bootsector code
  floppy.img - rawrite-compatible (raw data) 1.44MB floppy image
  hello.asm - displays the receiver
  hello.pal - the palette for hello.raw
  hello.raw - raw 320x200x256 version of hello.jpg
  Makefile - fluffy bunnies
  readme.txt - cure for cancer

History

200x - The main author has a vivid inspiration in a dream

Autumn 2004 - After dozens of man years^H^H^H^H^Hminutes of furious coding, the Goatse Rescue Floppy hits the clogged ovipositors of the Internets

Later the same day - A single URL is pasted on IRC via anonymous Al-Qaeda spice routes

A week passes - The Goatse Rescue Floppy gains notoriety, is mentioned on numerous blogs and even the reverend Slashdot - the Pravda of our times

At this point, tens of thousands of interested customers pass through the page each day. Tens of millions of people get initiated to Goatse against their will in schools, workplaces and their sad excuses of homes.

A few months pass - Electronic Frontier Foundation, or GNAMBLA, hops on the bandwagon and utilizes the Goatse Rescue Floppy codebase to enhance the then new Mac OSX x86. Many lives are changed forever.

Late 2004 - Goatse Rescue Floppy Technical Support Team answers the 50,000th email concerning how to remove a GRF installation from the main hard drive.

2008 - GRF marches on. Thousands of countries boycott the Olympics.

Custom payloads

Goatse Rescue Floppy 1.1 includes the needed tools for converting any JPEG image into the raw format that can be attached to the floppy for display. Simply replace hello.jpg or edit the source files to use another image.

Goatse Rescue Floppy is designed so that the payload can be changed to any .com type MS-DOS executable. The conditions are that you can't use any features of MS-DOS (use the BIOS routines instead or write your own). Also, while the GRF "license" is quite liberal (depending of how much you hate children) the official stance is that no permanently harmful code should be attached to the loader.

To test custom payloads, you can replace hello.com with a small intro and modifying the source files so that (1) the new .com is included in the floppy image and (2) the right amount of sectors is read from the floppy. Also, as already mentioned, using MS-DOS routines will not work. That is, if you have int 21h in the code, you have to replace that with your own routine or a suitable BIOS routine.