The Ping-Pong virus (also called "Bouncing Ball" or "Italian") was probably
the most common and best known boot sector virus for a while, although the
Stoned virus now outnumbers it.
An infected diskette will contain 1K in "bad clusters".
When this virus activates, a small "ball" starts bouncing around the
screen, but in most cases no serious damage occurs.
There is one small bug in the virus code, which causes a crash on '286
machines (and also V20, '386 and '486). The reason is that the author
used the "MOV CS,AX" instruction, which only exists on '88 and '86
processors.
This variant appeared in Israel. There the effect of the virus has been
drastically changed. Instead of displaying a bouncing ball, the virus
introduces typing errors in all text going out to the printer.
