86-DOS Version 0.11 Found

https://virtuallyfun.com/2023/12/30/86-dos-version-0-11-found/

by xeeeeeeeeeeenu • 3 years ago

43 11 3 years ago

virtuallyfun.com

RetroTechie• 3 years ago

WordPress: "There has been a critical error on this website."

HN hugged? lol

scruffyherder3• 3 years ago

Nah, it was wp-mail-smtp. It completely crashed out on me.

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught TypeError: ActionScheduler_Action::set_schedule(): Argument #1 ($schedule) must be of type ActionScheduler_Schedule, ActionScheduler_NullSchedule given

I've been able to take 2 million hits a day, so it's not that!

ksaj4• 3 years ago

One of my favourite DOS things was the DEBUG.EXE command. As far as I know, it was the only debugger that allows for the creation of debug files where you could do things like debug.exe < script.dbg to do low level things like replacing a disk partition table.

It was a very handy method of passing around binaries in text-oriented chat systems.

scruffyherder3• 3 years ago

I'd only zapped the partition table...

https://virtuallyfun.com/2009/12/03/partitioning-with-debug/

ksaj4• 3 years ago

What got me into assembly programming was my peecee getting infected with the STONED virus at the end of the 80's. DOS came with a small very thick binder user manual, and the DEBUG.EXE section was very extensive. It seemed to me that I could use it to repair my disks. It took a while, but I succeeded.

I managed to carve out the boot sector, learn assembly, and rewrite the virus code to more human readable format, and then the cherry on top: read the original boot sector off the disk (which I learned about through the virus code itself) and write it on top of the virus code. All this just from the user manual pages for DEBUG. The code for both reading and writing the virus code and the original boot sector, which was offset to a different sector, was right there in the virus. So it was an unusual self-documenting solution.

That was so much fun, I went head first into learning how to program in Assembler using TASM (Borland Turbo Assembler), which is in every way a more friendly way to write assembler. I still have the TASM programming book I bought way back then on my severely nerdy book shelf.

Those sure were the days.

Unsurprisingly, I kept up on viruses and antivirus, then hacking, then firewalls, then pentesting, in that order, as they were invented. The STONED virus and the DOS manual literally gave me a career path.

drwu• 3 years ago

debug.exe did not like non-DOS EOL, which caused some problems when copying texts.

If I remembered correctly, debug was only capable of writing 64kB (mono-segment) data? Though one can always create an in-RAM program inside debug to output larger files.

ksaj4• 3 years ago

Yea, I think you could only write a COM file, since they are single segment "memory images". And 64kB was indeed the limit for a memory segment in those days.

Depending on what you were doing, even a ^C character in a script would throw it off, too.

wingman-jr• 3 years ago

Yeah, I went looking for debug.exe on the listing as well. There was something just so visceral and direct about its usage that I enjoyed.

tschak• 3 years ago

I made a very in-depth video that shows 86-DOS version 0.11 being used in-context to port a piece of code from CP/M-80 2.2, to 86-DOS using RDCPM, TRANS, and the ASM. I also directly address the elephant in the room "Was CP/M code stolen for MS-DOS?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd7T5euID1E

86-DOS Version 0.11 Found

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