DOS ain't dead

Hi,
Does anybody tried LZ-DOS 7.1? (I found link on Lucho's site). It's direct replacement for MS-DOS 7.1 and should be 100% compatible. It can boot my win98se well but it hangs when I try to boot previous DOS version (I have MS-DOS 7.1 and MS-DOS 6.22 on same partition) using the last startup menu item. It just displays "Starting previous LZ-DOS version..." (or similar) and hangs. So then is useless for me.
But it's nice replacement for win98 safe boot floppy, it saves near 200kB of system files for other use.

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> Hi,
> Does anybody tried LZ-DOS 7.1? (I found link on Lucho's site). It's direct
> replacement for MS-DOS 7.1 and should be 100% compatible. It can boot my
> win98se well but it hangs when I try to boot previous DOS version (I have
> MS-DOS 7.1 and MS-DOS 6.22 on same partition) using the last startup menu
> item. It just displays "Starting previous LZ-DOS version..." (or similar)
> and hangs. So then is useless for me.
> But it's nice replacement for win98 safe boot floppy, it saves near 200kB
> of system files for other use.

I've viewed LZ-DOS in memory and compared it to MS-DOS 7.10. Almost everything is identical, so yes, it is 100% compatible, since it's a ripped copy of MS-DOS 7.10 with some copyright information removed.

Not all the copyright information is removed, though - it still contains this in memory:

"MS-DOS Version 7 (C)Copyright 1981-1995 Microsoft Corp Licensed Material - Property of Microsoft All rights reserved"

It's bad enough to be copying other people's software when they don't want you to, but to be removing credit? That's pretty low.

> Not all the copyright information is removed, though - it still contains
> this in memory:
>
> "MS-DOS Version 7 (C)Copyright 1981-1995 Microsoft Corp Licensed Material
> - Property of Microsoft All rights reserved"
>
> It's bad enough to be copying other people's software when they don't want
> you to, but to be removing credit? That's pretty low.

In case anyone is curious, this is at offset 0x9E15D in memory, and the same string is in 0x941C in the original MS-DOS 7.10 IO.SYS.

And yes, it is totally illegal to be distributing this, and much riskier than simply distributing the original MS-DOS 7.10.

> > Not all the copyright information is removed, though - it still contains this in memory:
> >
> > "MS-DOS Version 7 (C)Copyright 1981-1995 Microsoft Corp Licensed Material
> > - Property of Microsoft All rights reserved"
>
> In case anyone is curious, this is at offset 0x9E15D in memory, and the
> same string is in 0x941C in the original MS-DOS 7.10 IO.SYS.

This is misleading. The string at 9E15Dh must be from COMMAND.COM! For those of us who use 4DOS instead, there is no such string, nowhere in the RAM. For those who are willing to confirm my words, please try my hex-boot disk, load LZ-DOS and examine menory (for example, you can start FM and press Alt-7). Of course, you will find nothing of the sort in memory.

Sorry for breaking my promise not to post here anymore, but such misleading information is really something I can't stand. Do you think that if your theory is correct, the person who managed to pack a kernel in a non-standard format would fail to mention the so obvious copyright string and not remove it? And what about the huge difference between 9E15Dh and 0941Ch?

By the way, we now suspect "sol" is in fact Andreas Grech. His goal is to discredit Jack and me in any possible way but he discredits himself instead.

> Do you think
> that if your theory is correct, the person who managed to pack a kernel in
> a non-standard format would fail to mention the so obvious copyright string
> and not remove it?

It happens a lot.

> And what about the huge difference between 9E15Dh and 0941Ch?

Binaries can't be edited or decompiled/recompiled?

> By the way, we now suspect "sol" is in fact Andreas Grech. His goal is to
> discredit Jack and me in any possible way but he discredits himself
> instead.

sol is a real Canadian. There is linguistic evidence.

> This is misleading. The string at 9E15Dh must be from COMMAND.COM! For
> those of us who use 4DOS instead, there is no such string, nowhere in the
> RAM. For those who are willing to confirm my words, please try my
> hex-boot disk, load
> LZ-DOS and examine menory (for example, you can start FM and press Alt-7).
> Of course, you will find nothing of the sort in memory.
>
> Sorry for breaking my promise not to post here anymore, but such
> misleading information is really something I can't stand. Do you think
> that if your theory is correct, the person who managed to pack a kernel in
> a non-standard format would fail to mention the so obvious copyright string
> and not remove it? And what about the huge difference between 9E15Dh and
> 0941Ch?
>
> By the way, we now suspect "sol" is in fact Andreas Grech. His goal is to
> discredit Jack and me in any possible way but he discredits himself
> instead.

You're right, it is from COMMAND.COM, my bad. I should've known better than to think whoever stole MS-DOS and renamed it would have any scruples and leave any string related to MS in it.

So let's do some further digging.

I downloaded your horrid excuse for a bootdisk and removed the settings causing it to crash.

I set it to DOS=LOW, and my bootdisk to DOS=LOW. I added a memory viewer and mem.exe. "MEM /C /P" reveals:

Lucho's Lame LZ-DOS 7.10 bootdisk "SYSTEM" memory size: 80048 bytes
My MS-DOS 7.10 bootdisk "SYSTEM" memory size: 80080 bytes

Weird! 32 bytes difference. Probably a buffer :) How'd this LZ-DOS manage to end up taking the same amount of space as MS-DOS?

0x1EC3 on Lucho's lame LZ-DOS 7.10 bootdisk: "COUNTRY.SYS"
0x1EC3 on my MS-DOS 7.10 bootdisk: "COUNTRY.SYS"
0x1DF13 in my MS-DOS 7.10 IO.SYS: "COUNTRY.SYS"

All the data around "COUNTRY.SYS" matches as well. Weird! What's LZ-DOS doing with an obscure COUNTRY.SYS reference that matches the one in IO.SYS from MS-DOS 7.10?

0x1910 on Lucho's lame LZ-DOS 7.10 bootdisk: CUEAAAACEEEIIAAEAA etc etc
0x1910 on my MS-DOS 7.10 bootdisk: CUEAAAACEEEIIAAEAA etc etc
0x1D960 in my MS-DOS 7.10 IO.SYS: CUEAAAACEEEIIAAEAA etc etc

Weird!!!! LZ-DOS also has a really strange, obscure string that MS-DOS 7.10 also has. In the exact same memory offset once again! What a strange coincidence! Now what on earth would a DOS cloner need this string for? No one knows.

If you take a peek at the IO.SYS in "LZ-DOS 7.10", you can see there are no obvious strings showing in it. Weird, where are the strings? Why when we view it with an asm viewer like HIEW or QVIEW, can't we see any legible assembly? Hrmm! Waitaminute! It's compressed! Why are they compressing it? What would the original filesize be? Perhaps because it would match IO.SYS from MS-DOS 7.10 exactly? :)

> By the way, we now suspect "sol" is in fact Andreas Grech. His goal is to
> discredit Jack and me in any possible way but he discredits himself
> instead.

Since you're so defensive about this, I'm going to assume you're the low-life that removed the copyright information out of MS-DOS and called it "LZ-DOS".

> > And what about the huge difference between 9E15Dh and 0941Ch?
>
> Binaries can't be edited or decompiled/recompiled?

The point is about the addresses of these strings. 9E15Dh is near the end of the 640K conventional memory and the string there belongs to Microsoft's COMMAND.COM which he uses. 0941Ch is about 37K from address 0, and the string there belongs to Microsoft's IO.SYS which he uses for comparison, but not to IO.SYS of LZ-DOS.

> sol is a real Canadian. There is linguistic evidence.

I'd be glad if you prove me wrong.

> CUEAAAACEEEIIAAEAA etc etc
>
> Weird!!!! LZ-DOS also has a really strange, obscure string that MS-DOS 7.10 also has.

For those not familiar with DOS kernels, that's an internal NLS table that should be present in every DOS kernel.

> If you take a peek at the IO.SYS in "LZ-DOS 7.10", you can see there are
> no obvious strings showing in it. Weird, where are the strings? Why when
> we view it with an asm viewer like HIEW or QVIEW, can't we see any legible
> assembly? Hrmm! Waitaminute! It's compressed! Why are they compressing
> it? What would the original filesize be? Perhaps because it would match
> IO.SYS from MS-DOS 7.10 exactly? :)

Try to decompress it if you can, to see whether you're right or not. I bet you'd fail, but even if you succeed, you'd surely see that they don't match at all.

For any problems, flames, suspicions, etc. regarding LZ-DOS, please turn to SPS who released it (see their site for more information), not to me!

> Try to decompress it if you can, to see whether you're right or not. I bet
> you'd fail, but even if you succeed, you'd surely see that they don't match
> at all.
>
> For any problems, flames, suspicions, etc. regarding LZ-DOS, please turn
> to SPS who released it (see their site for more information), not to me!

If they don't match at all, then where are these strings coming from? Why are they at the exact same addresses?

> > By the way, we now suspect "sol" is in fact Andreas Grech. His goal is to
> > discredit Jack and me in any possible way but he discredits himself instead.
>
> Since you're so defensive about this, I'm going to assume you're the
> low-life that removed the copyright information out of MS-DOS and called
> it "LZ-DOS".

You're greatly overestimating my abilities. If I can't even make a decent boot diskette (albeit it can boot 6 different kernels, thanks to Eric Auer's METAKERN), how could I be able to compress a kernel that is neither in an .EXE nor a .COM nor a .SYS file format, which is a much, much more complex task? Come on!

Probably you're Grech to the same degree that I'm the one who released LZ-DOS.
Please redirect your blames to the ones who released it (SPS - see the LZ-DOS site), not me!

> You're greatly overestimating my abilities. If I can't even make a decent
> boot diskette (albeit it can boot 6 different kernels, thanks to Eric
> Auer's METAKERN), how could I be able to compress a kernel that is neither
> in an .EXE nor a .COM nor a .SYS file format, which is a much, much more
> complex task? Come on!
>
> Probably you're Grech to the same degree that I'm the one who released
> LZ-DOS.
> Please redirect your blames to the ones who released it (SPS - see the
> LZ-DOS site), not me!

If you don't have a clue about it - then don't defend it. It is, without a doubt, MS-DOS 7.10.

> If they don't match at all, then where are these strings coming from? Why are they at the exact same addresses?

I don't know. Unpacking it would probably answer your questions.

> I don't know. Unpacking it would probably answer your questions.

I don't have any question about it. It *is* MS-DOS 7.10.

I think I may just unpack it, for you and your other friends with no ability to reason.

> If you don't have a clue about it - then don't defend it.

You attack it, so someone must defend it, however clueless he may be...
I like it. It saves me a lot of space on my boot disk

> I think I may just unpack it, for you and your other friends with no ability to reason.

Good luck! But please provide enough evidence to prove that you really did it.

> Good luck! But please provide enough evidence to prove that you really did
> it.

I did part of it :)

If you pop it into HIEW or QVIEW, you'll see at 0x202 within the "LZ-DOS" IO.SYS:

inc dx
dec dx
jmp 0x704

<big chunk of crap code>

0x704:

cli
mov ax, cs
mov es, ax
mov ax, si
mov dx, di
mov di, 0202h
mov si, 0205h
mov cx, 04FFh
0x716:
xor byte ptr cs:[si],cl
movsb es:[di],cs:[si]
loop 0x716
mov si, ax
mov di, dx
sti
jmp 0x202 ; 0x202 is where the unobfuscated code is now

Let's continue, shall we?

Now, clip everything up to 0x205 in IO.SYS, since "mov si, 0205h" refers there.

Clip everything after ~04FFh bytes. You should now have a small file around 1300 bytes. Save it as "DATA". Assemble this [edit: with TASM] and run it. Omg, look, it "decrypted" into the exact same 1279 bytes that are at 0x202 in MS-DOS 7.10 IO.SYS.

What was the point of the LZ-DOS code? There wasn't. It just obfuscated it. If you take 1279 bytes from MS-DOS' IO.SYS at 0x202, and paste it into LZ-DOS at 0x202, over top of the 1279 bytes there...LZ-DOS will boot just fine. Why? LZ-DOS 7.10 is a hacked copy of MS-DOS 7.10.

locals
assume ds:PROGRAM, cs:PROGRAM
PROGRAM segment public word 'CODE'
org 100h
.386p
Start:

cld
mov ax, cs
mov ds, ax
mov es, ax

mov dx, offset sfile
mov ax, 3D00h
int 21h
mov word ptr [shandle], ax

mov dx, offset dfile
mov ah, 3ch
mov cx, 0000h
int 21h
mov word ptr [dhandle], ax

mov bx, word ptr [shandle]            ; read from file
mov cx, 1300
mov dx, offset buffer
mov ah, 3Fh
int 21h

mov di, offset buffer-3
mov si, offset buffer
mov cx, 04FFh
whateverthisdoes:
xor byte ptr cs:[si],cl
movsb
loop whateverthisdoes

mov cx, 1300
mov dx, offset buffer-3
mov ah, 40h
mov bx, word ptr [dhandle]
int 21h

mov ah, 3Eh
mov bx, word ptr [shandle]
int 21h

mov ah, 3Eh
mov bx, word ptr [dhandle]
int 21h

mov ax, 4c00h
int 21h
;---------------------------------------------------------
sfile       db 'DATA',00h
dfile       db 'DECD',00h
shandle     dw ?
dhandle     dw ?
padding     db 100 dup(?)
buffer      db 2000 dup(?)

PROGRAM ends
END Start

I chopped out the 1279 bytes from the original MS-DOS 7.10 IO.SYS and pasted it into the hacked version people have named LZ-DOS. It boots just fine...and hey, a few nanoseconds faster, since it doesn't have to do as much unobfuscating.

I shall have to find a place to upload it.

> I chopped out the 1279 bytes from the original MS-DOS 7.10 IO.SYS and
> pasted it into the hacked version people have named LZ-DOS. It boots just
> fine...and hey, a few nanoseconds faster, since it doesn't have to do as
> much unobfuscating.
>
> I shall have to find a place to upload it.

http://rapidshare.com/files/70881899/IO.SYS.html

Do any "FOOLS" need more proof? :)

> It's bad enough to be copying other people's software when they don't want
> you to, but to be removing credit? That's pretty low.

LZ-DOS *is* MS-DOS, and this issue has been "discussed" already in the EDR-DOS forum one and a half year ago:

http://www.drdosprojects.de/forum/drp_forum/posts/1008.html

---
MS-DOS forever!

> Probably you're Grech to the same degree that I'm the one who released
> LZ-DOS.
> Please redirect your blames to the ones who released it (SPS - see the
> LZ-DOS site), not me!

I'm sure that sol is not Japheth. Don't obsess too much over real identities because it doesn't really matter anyways. I mean, we're all just strangers anyways. It's not like most of us will ever meet in real life. (DOS CON?? Heh.) Don't take it all too personally, we're all just mouthing off online, nothing too seriously life threatening or whatever.

Good, but you just decrypted the loader. You didn't unpack the kernel.

> I'm sure that sol is not Japheth.

His English sounds like native, so you're probably right. So the secret remains.

> Don't obsess too much over real identities because it doesn't really matter anyways. I mean, we're all
> just strangers anyways. It's not like most of us will ever meet in real life. (DOS CON?? Heh.)

The unwritten laws of ethics say that if someone is so kind to say his real name, it's unkind for the other side to still stay in darkness. Just unkind. Or, if you prefer, disrespectful.

> Don't take it all too personally, we're all just mouthing off online, nothing too seriously life threatening or whatever.

I wish you were right!

Where the Evil Doctor epithetes remained?

All this probably sounds to the outside watcher like a quarrel of waifs over a piece of junk in the recycle bin.

> Good, but you just decrypted the loader. You didn't unpack the
> kernel.

I don't need to.

The "loader" is an assembled section of code - 1279 bytes that are part of the kernel source. This is 1279 bytes that can't match between two independent projects. It proves LZ-DOS is a ripped copy of MS-DOS without any doubt.

Do you have any idea what "to keep one's word" means, hypo?

I'm refering to Message from Udo Kuhnt. See you later on his forum!

Don't tell us any bullshit that you were forced to defend ... bla bla bla

P.S: I really wonder whether you have permission from your master to post here again. After that desaster you caused recently, making him loose a battle. I hope he has - at least - degraded you to a simple soldier.

---
MS-DOS forever!

I had to dispel the disinformation. If you don't want me here delete my account.

Are you trying to teach me lessons, you who tried thrice to circumvent Udo's ban on his forum - the last time with the schizophrenic post quoted below:

> Posted by: Japheth. 11/18/2007, 21:13:27
> Maybe you have to try my own EMM386 ha ha ha.
> Related link: http://japheth.de

So shut up, schizo!

> > Good, but you just decrypted the loader. You didn't unpack the kernel.
>
> I don't need to.

Because you can't. Well, rest on your forensic laurels here then...

The great Deng said "doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice": especially true for LZ-DOS.

> I had to dispel the disinformation.

I see, you have NO idea what "to keep one's word" does mean. Let me tell you that this is also regarded as being DISHONORABLE, like theft, hypocrisy, cowardness, slander, self-righteousness. Ok, I know you won't care, it's just for the record.

> If you don't want me here delete my account.

I agree, that sounds like a good idea.

> Are you trying to teach me lessons, you who tried thrice to
> circumvent Udo's ban on his forum - the last time with the schizophrenic
> post quoted below:
>
> > Posted by: Japheth. 11/18/2007, 21:13:27
> > Maybe you have to try my own EMM386 ha ha ha.
> > Related link: http://japheth.de

I see you are an expert in psychiatric diagnosis.

> So shut up, schizo!

IIRC there is no forum rule which tells that people with mental illness aren't allowed to post here. Else most members of the "Ellis gang" would have violated this rule.

---
MS-DOS forever!

> You're right, it is from COMMAND.COM, my bad. I should've known better

Does it really make a difference? MS COMMAND.COM is copyrighted software as well.

---
Forum admin

> replacement for MS-DOS 7.1 and should be 100% compatible. It can boot my
> win98se well but it hangs when I try to boot previous DOS version (I have
> MS-DOS 7.1 and MS-DOS 6.22 on same partition) using the last startup menu
> item. It just displays "Starting previous LZ-DOS version..." (or similar)
> and hangs. So then is useless for me.

see DUAL-BOOT IN OSR2/WIN98

---
Forum admin

> The unwritten laws of ethics say that if someone is so kind to say his
> real name, it's unkind for the other side to still stay in darkness. Just
> unkind. Or, if you prefer, disrespectful.

That's indeed interesting: a proven thief, slenderer, coward and liar teaching about ethics. I have to correct my previous claim telling that you're lacking humor. I apologize.

---
MS-DOS forever!

> see DUAL-BOOT IN
> OSR2/WIN98

I know this issue since 95 osr2 but this is not probably my cace. I have already working dualboot with MSDOS 7.1 and MSDOS 6.22. All I do was just boot MSDOS 7.1 and replace io.sys and command.com. Then I can always boot LZ-DOS 7.1 and Win98 but not MSDOS 6.22.

In case of crippled bootsector of 95 ors2 then I cannot boot anything, that's the difference. Do you managed to make working dulaboot with LZ-DOS?

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> > You're right, it is from COMMAND.COM, my bad. I should've known better
>
> Does it really make a difference? MS COMMAND.COM is copyrighted software as well.

But it's not offered with LZ-DOS.

> That's indeed interesting: a proven thief, slenderer, coward and liar teaching about ethics.

Look into the mirror and you will see him. A slanderer, coward, liar, etc., etc.

> I have to correct my previous claim telling that you're lacking humor. I apologize.

Thanks. By the way, are you writing this from the madhouse? Get well soon!

Heh, I wonder that a huge discusion rised. I didn't analyzed LZDOS files because of compression and I didn't have motivation and time to do it. But now I have a feeling that somebody made LZ-DOS as a disassemble/patch/recompile or binary patching to MS-DOS 7.1 and crypting to hide something. I understand the purpose that it would be good to have free or "free" 100% compatible DOS 7.x version.
But I'd like to know if LZ-DOS provides something more than compatability with win 9x/3x (there are aslo pathes for MSDOS7) and less size. If there are some noticable kernel changes to make it run faster/less memory usage or it's jus a copy (like AMD made intel 386, 486 clones).
And what about P.L.C. Systems company? There are very few informations about it which mean that simply someone who made LZ-DOS suck it up from a finger?

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> I see, you have NO idea what "to keep one's word" does mean. Let me tell
> you that this is also regarded as being DISHONORABLE, like theft,
> hypocrisy, cowardness, slander, self-righteousness. Ok, I know you won't
> care, it's just for the record.

Because I know that the above was written by a schizo, I don't care, indeed.

> > If you don't want me here delete my account.
>
> I agree, that sounds like a good idea.

Then do it, what are you waiting for?

> IIRC there is no forum rule which tells that people with mental illness
> aren't allowed to post here. Else most members of the "Ellis gang" would
> have violated this rule.

We're not a gang but the Five of Good. As for you Gang of Four, you're the top violator, indeed.

> And what about P.L.C. Systems company?

The LZ-DOS site says that their full name is "Software Products and Systems" (SPS). There is some other information about them like their previous SPS-DOS.

> Do you managed to make working dulaboot with LZ-DOS?

It's packed, so it'd be very difficult to do it. But what's the problem? You can always use a boot manager like the one from NT which you wrote me that you have.

> We're not a gang but the Five of Good. As for you Gang of Four, you're the
> top violator, indeed.

"The Five of Good" is indeed ways better than "Ellis gang", thanks! Btw, who is the fifth? Captured poor Udo?

---
MS-DOS forever!

> > And what about P.L.C. Systems company?
>
> The LZ-DOS site says that their full name is "Software Products and
> Systems" (SPS). There is some other information about them like their
> previous SPS-DOS.

There are only few references on google for "sps-dos" & "lz-dos", I found one here:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=615
OK, even if it is a product of real company it may be 99% based on reversed code. I think it was not so unusual in communist and post-communists countries (e.g. our n.p. Slusovice).
BTW I still didn't get answer if it have some advanded features over MSDOS.
About booting via NTLOADER - I'd like to use it as direct replacement for MSDOS and just wanted to know if this issue is paaear only on my system or it's common.

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> There are only few references on google for "sps-dos" & "lz-dos", I found one here:
> http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=615

Yes, the good old times when Bulgaria manufactured 40% of the computers in the Eastern block, employing 300,000 people and gaining $13,000,000,000 per year!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_h...re_in_Soviet_Bloc_countries#Bulgarian_Computers

> OK, even if it is a product of real company it may be 99% based on
> reversed code. I think it was not so unusual in communist and
> post-communists countries (e.g. our n.p. Slusovice).

What is Slusovice? A town and a computer name at the same time, like Pravetz? And what about "n.p."?

> BTW I still didn't get answer if it have some advanded features over MSDOS.

Except that it can run Windows 3.1 (unlike MS-DOS 7.10), I'm not aware of any.

> About booting via NTLOADER - I'd like to use it as direct replacement for
> MSDOS and just wanted to know if this issue is paaear only on my system or
> it's common.

I can't test this anymore, since I upgraded from FAT16 to FAT32 a few years ago.

> What is Slusovice? A town and a computer name at the same time, like
> Pravetz? And what about "n.p."?

Slu?ovice is a small town (about 3000 citizens) in Czech. Rep. where was (as in many other places) national agricultural company called "Agrokombinát Slu?ovice" or JZD (Jednotne Zemedelske Druzstvo) Slusovice. In '70-'80 it was turned into industrial zone where was developed and manufactured 8bit and later 16bit microcomputers. I can't quickly find some english site, so try to look at bottom of site for "TNS HC?8" computer.
http://sen.felk.cvut.cz/sen/index_cz.html?historie/mikropocitace.html
8bit ones was a big Babylon of integrated circuits from diff. countries of RVHP. Like CPU Z80 clones from DDR, dynamic RAM and EPROM from USSR, and 74 logic from our national company TESLA. Tesla also made some microcontrollers like MHB3000, 8035, 8051, 8080A but as I know they didn't get further to x86 clones. 16bit 286 computers was based on foreign snadard AT mainboards. But we had other companies like ZPA (Zavody Prumyslove Automatizace) in city Novy Bor, where they made XT board clones using intel 8088 CPU. Compared to western concurents it looked very robust and overweighted :). And BTW as I readed, some engineers from Slusovice was importing english SW and do translations and also rewrote copyrigts. It was one of few companies who did business with western block.

> I can't test this anymore, since I upgraded from FAT16 to FAT32 a few
> years ago.

I still rather use multiple FAT16 volumes for DOS and FAT32 for windows.

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> > sol is a real Canadian. There is linguistic evidence.
>
> I'd be glad if you prove me wrong.

Let's make the challenge more interesting - you prove that you are right.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=615
> OK, even if it is a product of real company it may be 99% based on
> reversed code. I think it was not so unusual in communist and
> post-communists countries (e.g. our n.p. Slusovice).
> BTW I still didn't get answer if it have some advanded features over
> MSDOS.

It doesn't have new features, and it's not "based on reversed code". Apparently no one's really understood what I've shown here :)

If someone reverse engineered IO.SYS, they would then have to assemble it themselves. Unless they reverse engineered it perfectly (pretty much impossible), and ended up choosing the same assembler to use and the exact same options to assemble with (unlikely), the code would be different.

If I changed anything, the code would be different. Even if I changed a single byte, the the jump addresses around it would have all changed.

The only way this could have been done, would have been to take the original MS-DOS 7.10 IO.SYS, use a hex editor to remove copyright strings and then manually compress data and add decompression code.

This means that it's more likely to be unstable (probably why I can't get it to boot on a hard disk instead of a floppy), and it's also a little *wee* bit slower.

Even if it had been reverse engineered code, it would be just as illegal. If anyone were good enough to code their own kernel, they wouldn't need to steal a chunk of loader code anyway.

There is *no chance* the LZ-DOS kernel is not a hacked MS-DOS 7.10 kernel. There's no chance it's an independent project or even a reverse engineered & reassembled version. Just to make sure we're clear here.

What I find amusing about all this, is that Jack R. Ellis whines his ass off about people posting links to his drivers, or reposting his drivers with full copyright and without any modifications.

Yet, his friends (Johnson Lam, Lucho, who knows who else...) are posting other people's work with copyrights deleted out of it in full breach of the licenses.

Since you want to defend this crap so strongly, I'll hit you back where it hurts. I'd like to see "LZ-DOS" references removed from all your websites (Lucho, Johnson Lam & I'll be checking on others homepages).

What if you don't? Then I'll do the following:

a) Send an e-mail to a friend at MS, and see if they care. They probably won't, since they're not profiting from it. They might send out some threatening letters though. Since this may not be effective enough on its own...

b) I will take Jack Ellis' drivers, remove all references to Jack, update them and release new versions periodically under their own name. Though this isn't particularly ethical, it *is* legal, unlike what you guys are doing, since the sources were released under "free use" as opposed to BSD/GPL which require that copyright notices remain :)

You've got 10 days.

> > > sol is a real Canadian. There is linguistic evidence.
> >
> > I'd be glad if you prove me wrong.
>
> Let's make the challenge more interesting - you prove that you are right.

OK, he isn't Grech. But I thought that Canadian English = US English.

> This means that it's more likely to be unstable (probably why I can't get
> it to boot on a hard disk instead of a floppy)

It boots from hard disk fine here (from a FAT32 partition).

> > This means that it's more likely to be unstable (probably why I can't
> get
> > it to boot on a hard disk instead of a floppy)
>
> It boots from hard disk fine here (from a FAT32 partition).

That's the thing about hacked & unstable code. It's not unstable for everyone.