Re: How do i Run programs [OT]



CBFalconer wrote:

It will not run under any circumstances on other machines (barring
a very specific interpreter).

Bah... I can name a number of environments (besides Windows, DOS and OS/2), which are capable of running exe programs.

The exe image format, dates back to DOS, so any DOS clone like e.g. *FreeDOS* (http://freedos.sourceforge.net/) or DR-DOS can do this too. The DOS exe image format has 'MZ' signature (after Mark Zbikowski). With Windows and OS/2 came the 'NE' format, and I think Windows NT introduced the 'PE' format for Win32 programs. 'NE' and 'PE' are supersets of the old 'MZ' exe format.

Here are some books I have on the subject:
The FreeDOS Kernel An MS-DOS emulator for platform independence and embedded systems development

Undocumented DOS: a programmer's guide to reserved MS-DOS functions and data structures Andrew Schulman, et. al. Addison-Wesley, 1990.

Windows Internals: The Implementation of the Windows Operating System, Matt Pietrek, Addison-Wesley, 1993.

in particular, the "Undocumented DOS" was a very interesting read for a young C programmer 15 years ago (ooops)..

I guess you had only *wine* (http://www.winehq.org) in mind, right? For example, the commercial *Cedega* http://www.transgaming.com/products_linux.php) and *ReactOS* (www.reactos.org) should run 'PE' programs too.


--
Tor <torust [at] online [dot] no>
.



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