Mail Archives: opendos/2000/12/04/15:35:10
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthias Paul" <PAUL-MA AT reze-1 DOT rz DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
To: <opendos AT delorie DOT com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 9:27 AM
Subject: Re: Optimizing CONFIG.SYS...
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2000 Patrick Moran wrote:
>
> > I'll disassemble whatever I want whenever I want, screw them!
> > [...]
> > If they can't write decent software and will not
> > guarantee it, then we have no choice but to do it ourselfs!
>
> I generally agree with you, although I think, it depends on what
> you do exactly.
Well if gates can steal and backward engineer software, and get away with
it, why can't I?
> First, disassembling and debugging are not the same thing. In many
> cases, you can still debug a piece of code while not looking at the
> instructions e.g. by trapping functions etc. Also, even when you need
> to see assembler instructions, they hardly reflect the source code
> (often written in higher languages) of the original work, but you can
> still get a grasp of what it is doing. And that's all that's needed.
IDA is pretty good at showing stuff for you. Although compiled high level
languages give you a bit of a fit. Most of the key parts of DOS were written
in assembler. In fact the original PC DOS was all assembler. That probably
explains why a lot of it and many later version were so much smaller. (File
sizes that is. ) Of course some of this bloating is due to the fact that
they now include help within each executable command. DRDOS of course uses
PKlite and compresses all of the executables. I decompress them and
disassenble those. I did this with the FDISK, FORMAT and SYS commands to see
what the difference is in the boot records they write.
> Any well-versed developer has no need to *use* foreign proprietary
> code (it's not only against ethics, but it would for sure be
That leaves Gates out!-:)))))
> illegal), but you often need to have sharp looks because you're
Not if you change 25% of the code. If you change 25% then it's legal?????? G
ates must have had something to do with that law!-:)))))))
> spotting a problem or a not documented case. I postulate, that
> almost not a single non-trivial and compatible DOS program can be
> written without using undocumented DOS internals. I really would
> prefer this would not be the case, but real world is different from
> an academic point of clean coding.
People have to be doing it all the time to figure Gates hidden crap that
makes MS software run faster than the competitions software, on a Gates OS,
if they do not pay extortion for his APIs.
> This is why books like "Undocumented DOS", "Undocumented Windows"
> or "DOS Internals" and projects like Ralf Brown's Interrupt List
> exist.
Yes, you need these because Gates never documented it. For example I have
Wyse DOS 3.21. In it's no so very good DOS book, it tells you about DRIVPARM
and you will not find it an any MS docs I have ever seen, just by third
parties.
> Furthermore, there are cases, where keeping things undocumented
> is illegal (when the info is needed by other vendors to develop
> well-behaving and performant programs in a particular environment -
> any bells ringing? ;-),
Oh! Yes! Absolutely!
> or where even reverse-engineering (which is
> even far beyond of disassembling and debugging I originally spoke
> about) would be legal (for example when you need it to spot someone
> elses illegal practices and you do not make the re-engineered stuff
> public, sometimes even beyond of that, when you use clean-room
> practices).
Hmmmm, maybe you should write to Mr gates about this. I don't think he has a
clue that this is also illegal.
> For example, many of the Y2K bugs in older programs (not only PCs
> and DOS based) could only be fixed by reverse-engineering existing
> binaries to source code that could be re-compiled after applying
> the fixes. A whole (though temporary) industry was built on that.
That reminds me, I need to find a patch if one exists for PCTools backup
program to make it Y2K compliant. I can use it, but I have to be very
careful not to lock up the system when using it when backups are made in the
year 2000. this only affects the restore, the the back up itself cannot
input the correct date. Also PCTools Backup itself cannot sort the backup
directory properly by date for the backup logs. Since Symantec bought and
destroyed Central Point Software, I can't expect those jerks to fix it.
> One more example, in early summer 1997 I did in fact reverse-
> engineered (not just debug) the whole Novell DOS 7 update 15.2
> kernel to re-develop sources for the patches for update 11 - 15.2
> (that is, everything they changed during year 1995) which have
> gone lost somewhere at Novell.
What got lost? Those early patches? They are all included in the last one. I
also have patch number 14 which I kept. Or are you talking about the source
code? Also the earlier versions of DRDOS source code seems to have
mysteriously disappeared. However, the current Digital Research company
seems to have gotten the DR DOS multi-user v 5.1 source code okay as they
have built upon it and made a 32 bit multi-tasking OS from it and say the DR
Multiuser DOS is also included in it. I cannot even find any version of 3.3x
anyplace and only DR DOSPLUS v 1.1 and DRDOS 3.40, 3.41 from people that
happen to have a copy of it. I happen to have a copy of 3.41 which I coppied
from the original diskettes that came with a Packard bell computer were i
worked in 1989. But some jerk erased the FORMAT.COM and added some other non
DRDOS crap to the originals, instead of doing it to copies. That makes one
want to go out and get an M-16!-:))))
I also lost my copy of DR DOS 5.0 and have been unable to find it thus far
on the net.
> Fortunately almost all of them (except for the latest BIOS sources,
> which finally have been found back in 1999 ;-) showed up later, but
> without that effort, DR-DOS 7.02+ and higher would now be based on
> Novell DOS 7 update 10 or so. This also was completely legal, because
> Caldera bought the whole DRI stuff from Novell, not only the original
> "Novell DOS 7" product.
Hmmm, I had those updates all along. I threw out most of the older ones. I
think I had kept 10 for a while, but eventually threw that one out as 14
worked real good. I have never used 15 because someone had found some bugs
with it. I know nothing about a 15-2 update. I would like to get that one,
but did not find sny such animal on Novell's FTP site. Maybe they just now
call it update 15. I can't tell by the dates on the download files. That is
one of the main reasons I prefer to FTP files because I can save the
datestamp on them. I got most of my stuff from local BBSes here and several
of them were running multi-node BBS under Novell DOS 7, QEMM and DV. I think
one manged to get a multi-node BBS to run under Task manager. I do know that
some BBSes did that, but can't remember for sure if a local one did. Some
switched to using Novell Netware and Novell DOS for multi-node and had good
luck with that. I know of two that did that.
> Summarizing I should say that it is far easier to just develop
> nice looking code, but especially in the DOS environment you need very
> detailed specifications (including all the special cases and existing
> or previously fixed bugs, which are never mentioned in the offical
> documents) to not run into compatibility problems with some DOS
> issues or under some circumstances. And since many of these details
> are not documented, there really is no other choice than having sharp
> looks from time to time. Everybody who seriously programs has to
> and does. I wish things would be different...
Oh No! You must not have heard Mr Gates about this subject. "Those are not
bugs, they are features"!!!!-:))))))))
Of course they were not documented. I don't think he ever did get restore to
work right, he finally used PCTools Backup and Restore. I believe that was
from version 4.11. Think I compared the files from MS DOS and PCTools and
found them to be exactly the same. He also used Norton's Utilities to fix
other problems he had. His disk Defrag look suspiciously like Norton's
SPEEDISK!!! The MS DOS MIRROR.COM came directly unchanged from PCTools as
did the UNFORMAT and UNERASE, but he left out some critacal ones, but if you
already owned a copy of PCTools, there was no worry. So those fixes would of
course not be documented.
> Well, there are things that are legal and other's are not. This is,
> of course, no pledging for anything unlawful. As always, it depends
> on purpose and intention.
Well if Gates does it, it must be legal!
Pat
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