Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Fat binary" in English language version.
Für ein zukünftiges Update für Calderas OpenDOS 7.01 habe ich den Startcode von IBMBIO.COM so modifiziert, daß er - falls fälschlicherweise als normales Programm gestartet - ohne Absturz zur Kommandozeile zurückkehrt. Wann diese Sicherheitsfunktion in die offizielle Version Einzug halten wird, ist jedoch noch nicht abzusehen.(NB. NWDOSTIP.TXT is a comprehensive work on Novell DOS 7 and OpenDOS 7.01, including the description of many undocumented features and internals. It is part of the author's yet larger
MPDOSTIP.ZIP collection maintained up to 2001 and distributed on many sites at the time. The provided link points to a HTML-converted older version of the NWDOSTIP.TXT file.) [9][…] there was an opcode of "RST 0", which, if executed, would result in a warm boot. A file containing a Z3TXT module should never be executed, but at a cost of one byte we could protect ourself against that outside chance. The header also contained the string of characters "Z3TXT" followed by a null (0) byte. Many Z-System modules include such identifiers. In this category are resident command packages (RCPs), flow command packages (FCPs), and environment descriptor modules (Z3ENVs). Programs, such as Bridger Mitchell's […] JETLDR.COM, that load these modules from files into memory can use the ID string to validate the file, that is, to make sure that it is the kind of module that the user has stated it to be. User mistakes and damaged files can thus be detected. […] The header, thus, now stands as follows: […] rst […] db 'Z3TXT',0 ; null-terminated ID […] ; 12345678 ; must be 8 characters, […] db 'PROGNAME' ; pad with spaces […] ; 123 ; must be 3 characters […] db 'ENG' ; name of language […] dw LENGTH ; length of module […][15][16]
[…] CP/M marks the end of an ASCII file by placing a CONTROL-Z character in the file after the last data character. If the file contains an exact multiple of 128 characters, in which case adding the CONTROL-Z would waste 127 characters, CP/M does not do so. Use of the CONTROL-Z character as the end-of-file marker is possible because CONTROL-Z is seldom used as data in ASCII files. In a non-ASCII file, however, CONTROL-Z is just as likely to occur as any other character. Therefore, it cannot be used as the end-of-file marker. CP/M uses a different method to mark the end of a non-ASCII file. CP/M assumes it has reached the end of the file when it has read the last record (basic unit of disk space) allocated to the file. The disk directory entry for each file contains a list of the disk records allocated to that file. This method relies on the size of the file, rather than its content, to locate the end of the file. […][17][18]
[…] FreeKEYB builds the driver's runtime image at initialization time depending on the type of machine it is being loaded on, the type of keyboard, layout, country and code page used, the type of mouse and video adapter(s) installed, the other drivers loaded on that system, the operating system and the load and relocation method(s) used, the individual features included, and the configuration options specified in the command line. Due to the large number of command line switches and options supported […] (around fifty switches […] with multiple possible settings) there is a high number of feature combinations with uncountable dependencies […] resulting in […] endless number of […] different target images. FreeKEYB's Dynamic Dead Code Elimination technique manages to resolve […] these […] dependencies and […] remove dead code and data […] is not restricted to […] include or exclude a somewhat limited number of modules or whole sub-routines and fix up some dispatch tables as in classical TSR programming, but […] works […] at […] byte level […] able to remove […] individual instructions in the middle of larger routines […] distributed all over the code to handle a particular case or support a specific feature […] special tools are used to analyze the code […] and create […] fixup tables […] automated […] using conditional defines […] to declare the various cases […] not only optional at assembly time but at initialization time […] without the […] overhead of having at least some amount of dead code left in the runtime image […] to keep track of all the dependencies between […] these conditionals, dynamically build and relocate the runtime image, fix up all the references between these small, changing, and moving binary parts […] still allowing to use the tiny .COM/.SYS style […] model […] is done at initialization time […]
[…] brandneue[s] Feature, der dynamischen Dead-Code-Elimination, die die jeweils notwendigen Bestandteile des Treibers erst zum Installationszeitpunkt zusammenbastelt und reloziert, so daß keine ungenutzten Code- oder Datenbereiche mehr resident bleiben (z.B. wenn jemand ein bestimmtes FreeKEYB-Feature nicht benötigt). […]
[…] The end of an ASCII file is denoted by a control-Z character (1AH) or a real end of file, returned by the CP/M read operation. Control-Z characters embedded within machine code files (e.g., COM files) are ignored, however, and the end of file condition returned by CP/M is used to terminate read operations. […](56 pages)
[…] DSKWRITE.Z80 contains source for the CP/M version. […] DSKWRITE.ASM contains source for the DOS version. […] To get the single .COM file, you need to use FBMAKE: […][7] (NB. Mentions FBMAKE from the FATBNSEA.COM package.)
[…] DOS protection feature […] The idea is based on the utilities in Simeon Cran's MYZ80 emulator; the DOS-protection header in those goes one better by not changing any Z80 registers. The magic sequence is EB 52 EB: […] XCHG […] MOV D,D […] XCHG […] but that means the DOS code ends up quite a way away from the start of the program. […] More fun can be had with self-extract PMArc archives. Start one with […] defb 0EBh, 018h, '-pms-' […] and it's treated as a valid archive by the PMA utilities, sends 8086 processors to 011Ah, and Z80 processors to 0130h. […]
[…] FATBIN 1.00 - combine a CP/M .COM file and a DOS .COM file to create one which runs on both platforms. […] It was used to create: […] MSODBALL 2.05 - convert floppy discs between Amstrad 706k format and a DOS 706k format. […] Both the programs run under CP/M-80 and DOS. […]
[…] I've written a version of PMSFX that produces .COM files unpackable under DOS and CP/M (the first three bytes are both legal Z80 code, legal 8086 code and legal PMA header) […] as a self-extracting archive. […]
[…] brandneue[s] Feature, der dynamischen Dead-Code-Elimination, die die jeweils notwendigen Bestandteile des Treibers erst zum Installationszeitpunkt zusammenbastelt und reloziert, so daß keine ungenutzten Code- oder Datenbereiche mehr resident bleiben (z.B. wenn jemand ein bestimmtes FreeKEYB-Feature nicht benötigt). […]
[…] FreeKEYB is […] a true .COM and .SYS driver (tiny model) in one. You can safely overwrite the first JMP, that's part of what I meant by "tricky header". […] you can replace the FFFFh:FFFFh by a 3-byte jump and a pending DB FFh. It works with MS-DOS, PC DOS, DR-DOS, and most probably any other DOS issue as well. […]
[…] Add a SYS device driver header to the driver, so that CTMOUSE could be both in one, a normal TSR and a device driver - similar to our FreeKEYB advanced keyboard driver. […] This is not really needed under DR DOS because INSTALL= is supported since DR DOS 3.41+ and DR DOS preserves the order of [D]CONFIG.SYS directives […] but it would […] improve the […] flexibility on MS-DOS/PC DOS systems, which […] always execute DEVICE= directives prior to any INSTALL= statements, regardless of their order in the file. […] software may require the mouse driver to be present as a device driver, as mouse drivers have always been device drivers back in the old times. These mouse drivers have had specific device driver names depending on which protocol they used ("PC$MOUSE" for Mouse Systems Mode for example), and some software may search for these drivers in order to find out the correct type of mouse to be used. […] Another advantage would be that device drivers usually consume less memory (no environment, no PSP) […] It's basically a tricky file header, a different code to parse the command line, a different entry point and exit line, and some segment magics to overcome the ORG 0 / ORG 100h difference. Self-loadhighing a device driver is a bit more tricky as you have to leave the driver header where it is and only relocate the remainder of the driver […]
[…] FreeKEYB builds the driver's runtime image at initialization time depending on the type of machine it is being loaded on, the type of keyboard, layout, country and code page used, the type of mouse and video adapter(s) installed, the other drivers loaded on that system, the operating system and the load and relocation method(s) used, the individual features included, and the configuration options specified in the command line. Due to the large number of command line switches and options supported […] (around fifty switches […] with multiple possible settings) there is a high number of feature combinations with uncountable dependencies […] resulting in […] endless number of […] different target images. FreeKEYB's Dynamic Dead Code Elimination technique manages to resolve […] these […] dependencies and […] remove dead code and data […] is not restricted to […] include or exclude a somewhat limited number of modules or whole sub-routines and fix up some dispatch tables as in classical TSR programming, but […] works […] at […] byte level […] able to remove […] individual instructions in the middle of larger routines […] distributed all over the code to handle a particular case or support a specific feature […] special tools are used to analyze the code […] and create […] fixup tables […] automated […] using conditional defines […] to declare the various cases […] not only optional at assembly time but at initialization time […] without the […] overhead of having at least some amount of dead code left in the runtime image […] to keep track of all the dependencies between […] these conditionals, dynamically build and relocate the runtime image, fix up all the references between these small, changing, and moving binary parts […] still allowing to use the tiny .COM/.SYS style […] model […] is done at initialization time […]
[…] a […] unique feature […] we call dynamic dead code elimination, so you can at installation time […] specify which components of the driver you want and which you don't. This goes to an extent of dynamic loadable modularization and late linkage I have not seen under DOS so far. If you do not like the screen saver, macros, the calculator, or mouse support, or <almost anything else>, you can specify this at the command line, and FreeKEYB, while taking all the dependencies between the routines into account, will completely remove all the code fragments, which deal with that feature and are not necessary to provide the requested functionality, before the driver relocates the image into the target location and makes itself resident. […]
[…] byte sequence […] EB 03 C3 yy xx […] If you create a .COM file with those 5 bytes as the first ones […] you'll see 'JMP SHORT 3', followed by 3 garbage bytes. […] If you look at a Z80 disassembly […] that translates to 'EX DE,HL; INC BC;' […] The 3rd byte is 'JUMP' followed by the 16-bit address specified as yy xx […] you'll have a .COM file that runs on MS-DOS and […] CP/M […](NB. While the author speaks about the Z80, this sequence also works on the 8080 and compatible processors.)
[…] The reason to suspect such difference is that version 3.2x also supported CP/M-86 (the overlays are identical between DOS and CP/M-86, only the main executable is different) […] the .OVR files are 100% identical between DOS and CP/M-86, with a flag (clearly shown in the WordStar 3.20 manual) switching between them at runtime […] the OS interface in WordStar is quite narrow and well abstracted […] the WordStar 3.2x overlays are 100% identical between the DOS and CP/M-86 versions. There is a runtime switch which chooses between calling INT 21h (DOS) and INT E0h (CP/M-86). WS.COM is not the same between DOS and CP/M-86, although it's probably not very different either. […]
[…] Self-extracting archives are .COM files containing a number of smaller files. When you run one, it will create its smaller files […] The self-extract archive programs will run under DOS (2 or later) or CP/M, with identical effects. To extract them under Unix, you can use ZXCC […] FATBNSEA.COM […] FATBIN combines a CP/M-80 .COM file and a DOS .COM file to produce one that will work on both systems. […] M3C4SEA.COM […] M3CONV version 4 - converts Spectrum snapshots in the .Z80 or .SNA format to or from Multiface 3 format (Multiface 3 -> Z80 only on a PC). […] PMSFX21X.COM […] PMSFX is the program that was used to generate these self-unpacking archives. This version (2.11) can generate archives which unpack themselves under CP/M or DOS. You will need PMARC to use PMSFX. New: Under DOS, it supports exact file sizes. […] SP2BMSEA.COM […] Converts a Stop Press Canvas file to a Windows .BMP […][8]
[…] DOS protection feature […] The idea is based on the utilities in Simeon Cran's MYZ80 emulator; the DOS-protection header in those goes one better by not changing any Z80 registers. The magic sequence is EB 52 EB: […] XCHG […] MOV D,D […] XCHG […] but that means the DOS code ends up quite a way away from the start of the program. […] More fun can be had with self-extract PMArc archives. Start one with […] defb 0EBh, 018h, '-pms-' […] and it's treated as a valid archive by the PMA utilities, sends 8086 processors to 011Ah, and Z80 processors to 0130h. […]
[…] byte sequence […] EB 03 C3 yy xx […] If you create a .COM file with those 5 bytes as the first ones […] you'll see 'JMP SHORT 3', followed by 3 garbage bytes. […] If you look at a Z80 disassembly […] that translates to 'EX DE,HL; INC BC;' […] The 3rd byte is 'JUMP' followed by the 16-bit address specified as yy xx […] you'll have a .COM file that runs on MS-DOS and […] CP/M […](NB. While the author speaks about the Z80, this sequence also works on the 8080 and compatible processors.)
[…] FATBIN 1.00 - combine a CP/M .COM file and a DOS .COM file to create one which runs on both platforms. […] It was used to create: […] MSODBALL 2.05 - convert floppy discs between Amstrad 706k format and a DOS 706k format. […] Both the programs run under CP/M-80 and DOS. […]
[…] DSKWRITE.Z80 contains source for the CP/M version. […] DSKWRITE.ASM contains source for the DOS version. […] To get the single .COM file, you need to use FBMAKE: […][7] (NB. Mentions FBMAKE from the FATBNSEA.COM package.)
[…] Self-extracting archives are .COM files containing a number of smaller files. When you run one, it will create its smaller files […] The self-extract archive programs will run under DOS (2 or later) or CP/M, with identical effects. To extract them under Unix, you can use ZXCC […] FATBNSEA.COM […] FATBIN combines a CP/M-80 .COM file and a DOS .COM file to produce one that will work on both systems. […] M3C4SEA.COM […] M3CONV version 4 - converts Spectrum snapshots in the .Z80 or .SNA format to or from Multiface 3 format (Multiface 3 -> Z80 only on a PC). […] PMSFX21X.COM […] PMSFX is the program that was used to generate these self-unpacking archives. This version (2.11) can generate archives which unpack themselves under CP/M or DOS. You will need PMARC to use PMSFX. New: Under DOS, it supports exact file sizes. […] SP2BMSEA.COM […] Converts a Stop Press Canvas file to a Windows .BMP […][8]
[…] I've written a version of PMSFX that produces .COM files unpackable under DOS and CP/M (the first three bytes are both legal Z80 code, legal 8086 code and legal PMA header) […] as a self-extracting archive. […]
[…] The reason to suspect such difference is that version 3.2x also supported CP/M-86 (the overlays are identical between DOS and CP/M-86, only the main executable is different) […] the .OVR files are 100% identical between DOS and CP/M-86, with a flag (clearly shown in the WordStar 3.20 manual) switching between them at runtime […] the OS interface in WordStar is quite narrow and well abstracted […] the WordStar 3.2x overlays are 100% identical between the DOS and CP/M-86 versions. There is a runtime switch which chooses between calling INT 21h (DOS) and INT E0h (CP/M-86). WS.COM is not the same between DOS and CP/M-86, although it's probably not very different either. […]
[…] FreeKEYB is […] a true .COM and .SYS driver (tiny model) in one. You can safely overwrite the first JMP, that's part of what I meant by "tricky header". […] you can replace the FFFFh:FFFFh by a 3-byte jump and a pending DB FFh. It works with MS-DOS, PC DOS, DR-DOS, and most probably any other DOS issue as well. […]
[…] Add a SYS device driver header to the driver, so that CTMOUSE could be both in one, a normal TSR and a device driver - similar to our FreeKEYB advanced keyboard driver. […] This is not really needed under DR DOS because INSTALL= is supported since DR DOS 3.41+ and DR DOS preserves the order of [D]CONFIG.SYS directives […] but it would […] improve the […] flexibility on MS-DOS/PC DOS systems, which […] always execute DEVICE= directives prior to any INSTALL= statements, regardless of their order in the file. […] software may require the mouse driver to be present as a device driver, as mouse drivers have always been device drivers back in the old times. These mouse drivers have had specific device driver names depending on which protocol they used ("PC$MOUSE" for Mouse Systems Mode for example), and some software may search for these drivers in order to find out the correct type of mouse to be used. […] Another advantage would be that device drivers usually consume less memory (no environment, no PSP) […] It's basically a tricky file header, a different code to parse the command line, a different entry point and exit line, and some segment magics to overcome the ORG 0 / ORG 100h difference. Self-loadhighing a device driver is a bit more tricky as you have to leave the driver header where it is and only relocate the remainder of the driver […]
Für ein zukünftiges Update für Calderas OpenDOS 7.01 habe ich den Startcode von IBMBIO.COM so modifiziert, daß er - falls fälschlicherweise als normales Programm gestartet - ohne Absturz zur Kommandozeile zurückkehrt. Wann diese Sicherheitsfunktion in die offizielle Version Einzug halten wird, ist jedoch noch nicht abzusehen.(NB. NWDOSTIP.TXT is a comprehensive work on Novell DOS 7 and OpenDOS 7.01, including the description of many undocumented features and internals. It is part of the author's yet larger
MPDOSTIP.ZIP collection maintained up to 2001 and distributed on many sites at the time. The provided link points to a HTML-converted older version of the NWDOSTIP.TXT file.) [9][…] The end of an ASCII file is denoted by a control-Z character (1AH) or a real end of file, returned by the CP/M read operation. Control-Z characters embedded within machine code files (e.g., COM files) are ignored, however, and the end of file condition returned by CP/M is used to terminate read operations. […](56 pages)
[…] a […] unique feature […] we call dynamic dead code elimination, so you can at installation time […] specify which components of the driver you want and which you don't. This goes to an extent of dynamic loadable modularization and late linkage I have not seen under DOS so far. If you do not like the screen saver, macros, the calculator, or mouse support, or <almost anything else>, you can specify this at the command line, and FreeKEYB, while taking all the dependencies between the routines into account, will completely remove all the code fragments, which deal with that feature and are not necessary to provide the requested functionality, before the driver relocates the image into the target location and makes itself resident. […]
[…] there was an opcode of "RST 0", which, if executed, would result in a warm boot. A file containing a Z3TXT module should never be executed, but at a cost of one byte we could protect ourself against that outside chance. The header also contained the string of characters "Z3TXT" followed by a null (0) byte. Many Z-System modules include such identifiers. In this category are resident command packages (RCPs), flow command packages (FCPs), and environment descriptor modules (Z3ENVs). Programs, such as Bridger Mitchell's […] JETLDR.COM, that load these modules from files into memory can use the ID string to validate the file, that is, to make sure that it is the kind of module that the user has stated it to be. User mistakes and damaged files can thus be detected. […] The header, thus, now stands as follows: […] rst […] db 'Z3TXT',0 ; null-terminated ID […] ; 12345678 ; must be 8 characters, […] db 'PROGNAME' ; pad with spaces […] ; 123 ; must be 3 characters […] db 'ENG' ; name of language […] dw LENGTH ; length of module […][15][16]