December January work: Brief overview of the last 6 weeks

2024-01-21

It's been a while since I got to write one of my regular blog posts. Hence, forgive me for being brief.

• Round parens are accepted as relocation markers throughout
• Allow to highlight opcode after brackets in a line
• Allow highlighting when a line ends in a dash after machine code
• Allow a match after brackets/parens, but not if the match would start with a relocated value
• If hint flle is empty, dump newly displayed hints unconditionally

Mention ELDs in the lDebug overview.

Add a boolean parameter to _autodigits to insert an underscore separator (NASM style) to group the output with a group width of 3 digits.

Instead of a default that corresponds to the full compressed plus uncompressed size, when errors occur the inicomp test program will now display a zero to help mak.sh to detect the error and abort its run.

• Add drload (iniload replacement that's kernel-only, EDR-DOS / FreeDOS load only)
• Add drkernpl (for single-file EDR-DOS load)
• iniload: Only run MS-DOS v6 / IBM-DOS entry if CS is exactly 70h (implies support for NTLDR, BOOTMGR, and DOS-C IPL load)
• iniload: Support EDR-DOS load if file is at least 32 KiB sized, detected by checking that the stack does not overlap file data
• iniload: Automatically enable EDR-DOS load if entire file is large enough
• doc: List other sector to kernel protocols, list drload

• Parse and use a 32-bit sector number for sector L/W (partially recreated from MS-DOS v6 Debug)
• Sector L/W will allow access to drives that require a two-digit hexadecimal number to address
• Fix error messages on sector L/W
• Call disk reset before and after sector access
• Bump release number to release 1

• Pick most changes from SvarDOS EDR-DOS repo up to 2024 early January (except those which concern changing from batch files to Watcom makefiles, and the use of the Watcom linker and EXE2BIN instead of WarpLink and x2b2)
• Add a note on default BPB detecting a FAT16 when it actually results in a FAT12 FS (benign bug)
• Use the smaller of BPB size and partition size
• Implement single-file load in lDOS drkernpl in lDOS drload or iniload
• Add round utility to round up intermediate DRDOS module file size
• Use WarpLink and x2b2 to build DRDOS module (picked from SvarDOS, also requires SvarDOS re-implementation of fixupp utility)
• Add option to show an lDOS header and link instead of SvarDOS or outdated DR-DOS Enhancement Project
• Optimise some stack frame uses in bdevio
• Enable LZMA-302eos depacker counter output

• dpb.eld
• Change depacker for extpak/list.eld to default to continue reading
• extlib: Do not overflow stack in HELP DESCRIBE
• Allow to resize history buffer segment
• Fix _INIT_MAX ELD data block size for app/device initial reloc and bootloaded mode
• dm.eld: Add HEADER and TABLE modes as requested
• Define "@;SLD0" format for Script for lDebug files and their desc= lines and helpstart/helpend comments, used by list.eld
• withhdr.eld: Add WITH NODUMP for S commands
• rdumpidx.eld, rdumpstr.eld: New ELDs as requested (rdumpidx, rdumpstr)
• printf.eld, ldmem.eld: Add a help
• quit.eld: Only actually run if either RUN keyword specified or INSTALL QUICKRUN was used prior
• doc: Add EXT command to main online help screen
• list.eld: Retry with scripts path prepended if pattern yields no match
• eldcall.mac: Mark call rel16 in extcall as relocated in the listing file, to help TracList
• extlib.eld: Fix, an extpak relocation was placed wrongly
• ldmem.eld: Display overlap in MEM
• doc: Add chapter eld with detailed descriptions of ELDs
• list.eld: Add /LIBNAME keyword to filter for specific ELDs in a library ELD
• eld: Reset lastcmd to disable autorepeat on handled ELD command
• eld: Add setrc calls on custom error conditions
• dbitmap.eld: Fix error on non-PM lDebug running on a 386 or higher
• checksum.eld: New ELD to calculate a checksum over some memory range
• eld: Prepare to drop reclaim hint
• boot.asm: Bugfix, allow subdirectories specified for the add file
• boot.asm: Introduce dot component to pathnames, specifically to allow boot protocol=msdos6 cmdline=1 fda/some/path/io.sys . command line content

Add ::directorypad keyword to add deleted/empty directory entries.

Missing: Add the E.

Bug report and Pull Request on fixing the EDR-DOS / FreeDOS difference in passing the load unit in DL or BL.