> Is that PCJr?? THAT cartridge will do you NO
GOOD on the Mindset.
?C: Obviously if it's not physically compatible.
Give me some credit.
But it is at least cartridge BASIC, don't need to write my own. Shmott, no?
Unfortunately, a "BASIC cartridge" could be for adding BASIC to a
computer, OR could be for supplementing a BASIC that is built-in, much
like BASICA being a supplement to the ROM BASIC, rather than stand-alone.
Of course SOME companies, such as Compaq, renamed their GW-BASIC to
BASICA.COM "for compatability with legacy batch files"
> DO NOT TRUST the extension of the file!? Are the
first two bytes of it
> "MZ"?
C: That's actually a good point. But if YOU wrote
something, should I
trust it then?
NO. Sometimes, including the files that come with MS-DOS, an .EXE may be
renamed a .COM or vice-versa (harmlessly) just to be compatible with
legacy batch files, OR because a .COM will be run before a .EXE if the
rest of the filename matches! Once it is "committed" to running an
executable file, MS-DOS doesn't CARE whether it is REALLY a
.COM or .EXE until it starts to load it, and then it ignores the extension
and looks at the first two bytes.
C: All "executables" get loaded at offset 100h, no? That is CS:0100. I
thought that's how ti worked.
NO. A .EXE can make exceptions, and can have more than one segment. As
you know, a .COM is one segment, and is an actual image of what will be
in memory.
[EXE2BIN]
?C: I never would have suggested that. If it was
written to be a .com,
and obeyed the rules, _none_ of which I remember, then it would. I don't
know why you have to continually insult me. Sheesh. ?
I will stop insulting you as soon as there is any indication that you
already know what we are talking about. (such as that paragraph, or the
next one) And just how am I, or anybody else, supposed to know that you
already know that EXE2BIN does NOT work on any and every .EXE (as is
implied in the MS-DOS docs)?
Incidentally the
"tiny" model in later versions of MASM indicate the resultant code would
become a.com, no?
Yes, but that is not all the requirements. It is actually quite
easy to
make a file that is NOT compatible with being .COM in "tiny" model. Some
obvious situations would be writing a device driver, writing code to
be ROM'ed, or writing an overlay module.