Researching Chris Pile

From the mid to late 1980s Pile was programming Z80 code for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Many of his programs were utilities: they included the Dr Kode editor/assembler, the Ultra208 high-capacity disk formatter for the ZX Spectrum +3 and software to allow any ZX Spectrum equipped with a VTX5000 modem to access the many on-line Bulletin Board systems (BBS) which were popular at the time. Pile also had several utility programs published in the popular Your Sinclair magazine, including graphics routines for fast circle drawing and flood fill. Pile was also a semi-regular contributor to the game hacking pages within the magazine.

Around 1990 Pile turned his attention to the newly released SAM Coupé home computer. He produced two highly acclaimed pieces of software for this machine, namely ProDOS (a CP/M implementation) and, late in the SAM Coupé's life, a very faithful port of the classic game Defender.

In 1995, Pile was imprisoned for 18 months after being convicted of writing two PC computer viruses known as SMEG.Pathogen and SMEG.Queeg and the virus polymorphic engine known as SMEG.

The SMEG engine was produced as an object file which non-programmers could download and trivially link into an existing virus which, in turn, would make the resulting virus polymorphic and much harder to detect using anti-virus software. SMEG was also the first polymorphic engine with the ability to generate random CALLs to randomly generated subroutines within its encryptors. This gave the generated polymorphic code a more realistic appearance. SMEG also used exclusively 8086 machine language instructions, which meant it ran cleanly on any 80x86 based PC.

The name "Queeg", SMEG and Pathogen, as well as some of the virus activation messages, are from the British TV show Red Dwarf.

Towards the late 1990s Pile spent some time as a commercial games programmer, working mainly on the Nintendo Game Boy, Sega Game Gear and Master System consoles. In late 1997 Pile programmed a PC emulator for the arcade game Asteroids by Atari.

A goalkeeper, Pile never actually made a professional appearance, and in fact only made the bench for one senior game. Uniquely, however, this game was the 1985 European Cup Final, which saw him become the youngest footballer to be involved in this fixture, generally considered to be the biggest in club football.

Pile came through the Liverpool youth system, and signed professional forms in 1984 at the age of 17. Initially fourth-choice 'keeper, injuries to Bob Wardle and then Bob Bolder elevated Pile to second place (behind Bruce Grobbelaar) and saw him facing a possible European Cup winner's medal having just turned 18. Pile was indeed named on the bench for the final, but Liverpool lost to Juventus in a game overshadowed by the Heysel Disaster.

He joined Tranmere Rovers and then Bury as a non-contract player, playing reserve team football and impressed sufficiently at Bury to be offered a contract. Unfortunately, though, the deal was scuppered when he broke his wrist on the day of signing. Needing regular football, he accepted an offer to move to New Zealand, a move that he initially expected to be short-term. However, he settled so well, playing for Wellington side Waterside Karori, that he was able to ignore reported interest from Scottish giants Celtic. A couple of years later, personal reasons saw him return to England, and he joined Southport, where he had some success until he suffered a broken hand, the third of his career. This caused him to quit playing, and he returned to New Zealand where he has remained to this day.Chris is one of New Zealand's top goalkeeper coaches working over the past 18 years with New Zealand Under 17s & 20s, two spells with Wellington Phoenix in the Australia A-League, Team Wellington in the New Zealand National League and a number of clubs in Wellington.Chris is currently the goalkeeper coach for Waterside Karori back were his playing career started in New Zealand.

Chris can now be heard across the air waves of Australia & New Zealand radio as he works as an expert analyst in the Australian A-League.