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clean dos extender executable format (Developers)

posted by kerravon, Ligao, Free World North, 08.01.2023, 19:50

> You could do that — or, you could just put the a.out there without
> any additional tagging. I believe a.out has its own magic number(s) too.
Good point.

> > And then I will need to write an actual DOS extender
> > which does DPMI calls, right?
>
> Well, or you could hack an existing DOS extender to recognize your a.out
> file format, and massage the argv[] and envp[]
> information into a form that it can use.
Currently I call these functions:

PosGetCommandLine();
PosGetEnvBlock();

which are front-ends to INT 21H, AH=F6H, AL=3FH
and INT 21H, AH=F6H, AL=3BH respectively.

Any reason why I shouldn't do that?

> Other than HX, extenders such as
> CauseWay, DOS/32A, and PMODE/W are now also open source.
Thanks for that!

> (I happen to be tinkering with the CauseWay extender lately, for use with
> the gcc-ia16 toolchain. This is mainly because it supports
> running 16-bit protected mode programs (!). CauseWay is public domain
> too.)
I checked, and it is indeed - thanks for that!

https://github.com/amindlost/cw

Next question.

With PDOS-generic, I move the INT 21H calls (if
someone chooses such an implementation) outside
of the executable itself. And also provide a C
runtime library.

Would that be more appropriate?

https://sourceforge.net/p/pdos/gitcode/ci/master/tree/generic/__os.h

https://sourceforge.net/p/pdos/gitcode/ci/master/tree/generic/makecomm.w32

https://sourceforge.net/p/pdos/gitcode/ci/master/tree/pdpclib/pgastart.c

(it would still be an MZ stub plus a.out)

ie I guess the question is - is it really necessary
to do a 32-bit INT 21H in order to be considered
legitimate?

Like, let's say it's 1986 or whenever the Compaq
was released - what would the goal be, in hindsight?

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