Table of Contents
Late mid January work
2026-01-25
This week a little work happened. The MCP and CLU also got alternative backronyms to describe what they do: Multiple Command Payload and Comspec Load Utility.
Idiom on mistakes
It has been said that smart people learn from their mistakes, but wise people learn from other people's mistakes.
Dave A., quoted in The Daily WTF article on 2026-01-23
Debugger command to dump the first System File Table entries
I added to the ~/.dosemu/drive_c/ldebug.sld file so it contains the following:
Early mid January work on the MCP
2026-01-18
This week I put some work into the Master Control Program (MCP), and a new helper utility called the Codified Likeness Utility (CLU). (Both, of course, named for programs in the Tron franchise.) The MCP is stored in a file named ldosmcp.com or ldosmcpz.com which contains the lDOS kernel, a triple-mode lDebug build, the lDOS pre-boot loader, the instsect tool to install boot sector loaders, the patldos tool to patch lDOS kernel files, an Extension for lDebug library with over 60 extensions, and newly a FreeCOM build.
CLU is in a file named clu.exe, which can be used as the file pointed to by the COMSPEC variable. It finds ldosmcp.com and replaces its own process with the MCP, with a special handshake so that the MCP will load its FreeCOM build.
