pushbx wiki blog:pushbx:2025

How to create an iniload file carrying a DOS kernel

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-01-07T22:52:18+00:00

How to create an iniload file carrying a DOS kernel A user found that lDOS iniload was used in a certain boot image. After my answer identifying and describing iniload, the following question occurred in a comment: user pts, 2025-01-05 Building a native kernel The gold standard for building a complete, triple-mode kernel so that it is wrapped by lDOS iniload and optionally with an inicomp stage is

Mid December up to early January

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-01-13T18:08:00+00:00

Mid December up to early January 2025-01-12 inicomp Upload an older patch to add a -B switch to the testfile program. This causes it to run an int3 breakpoint right before calling depack. webecm Add news item for lDebug release 9. ldosboot Optimise iniload some. This includes one noteworthy instance of abusing call to push the offset of something on the stack and branch elsewhere. Trying to Proceed past this call (using lDebug's P command) will fail.

MS-DOS: simpler buffers and DOSCODE split

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-01-19T19:20:01+00:00

MS-DOS: simpler buffers and DOSCODE split 2025-01-19 This week I first uploaded some changes from the last 20 days concerning an adaptation of the MS-DOS v2.11 buffers subsystem to the lMS-DOS code base. Then I worked on splitting the DOSCODE segment from DOSDATA. This work isn't finished: While the split is done, it is not yet useful. But the hardest part seems to be done.

Mid late January work (Enhanced DR-DOS, lDebug, lMS-DOS)

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-01-28T19:56:12+00:00

Mid late January work (Enhanced DR-DOS, lDebug, lMS-DOS) 2025-01-26 Enhanced DR-DOS A user reported that PC-DOS command.com (after hacking its version check) didn't work correctly running a REN command on EDR-DOS. I was able to reproduce the error, and found that it was present in OpenDOS v7.01 already (but not in DR-DOS v6.00 or

Late January work

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-04T17:08:23+00:00

Late January work 2025-02-02 Some work on lMS-DOS and adding two new Extensions for lDebug, and minor work on the dm ELD. Extensions for lDebug * Add dosstrat.eld to display DOS UMB link status and memory allocation strategy * Add dosstrat.eld to the extlib.eld and the eld/mak.sh sccript * Add FORCE keyword

Early February work on lMS-DOS and lDebug

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-10T18:09:50+00:00

Early February work on lMS-DOS and lDebug 2025-02-09 lMS-DOS * Call init2_relocate_device also after a device driver is freed (dosemu2's umb.sys enables UMBs but doesn't remain resident in memory) * Support DEVICEHIGH= * In exec.nas put lDOS allocation function call into a critical section * Support the FreeDOS extension that int 21.4B80 uses the UMA. As opposed to FreeDOS we don't change the current UMB link status and allocation strategy, instead we simply pass a modified extended s…

Lots of work in early mid February

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-17T19:06:23+00:00

Lots of work in early mid February 2025-02-16 inicomp Eric Auer asked about the Snappy depacker of inicomp, so I adapted it for the test file mode of inicomp. In this mode, testfile.asm is assembled to create a depacker application. However, it loads the entire packed file into memory and depacks it using the inicomp depacker protocol. So the available amount of memory (largest block allocatable by 21.48) must be large enough to hold the combined buffer.

Mid late February work

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-24T17:22:27+00:00

Mid late February work 2025-02-23 webecm Add section on lDOS kernel. lDebug Allow to start a kernel command line with a semicolon after the second file specification. Doesn't always work: boot protocol ldos . .; append ... and boot protocol ldos . //; append ... are fine. boot protocol ldos . test\; append ...

Interlude: Current lDebug startup files

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-03-04T21:10:55+00:00

Interlude: Current lDebug startup files Something else for today: Because the Düssel-Café was closed for carnival last Sunday, today I want to list and discuss the ldebug.sld startup files that I have been using recently or not so recently. Plus, the scriptlet I use to enable booting different files in dosemu2 without having to move around a lot of files nor to re-configure dosemu2. This scriptlet allows to boot into lDebug's debugger command prompt rather than chainloading the FreeDOS kernel i…

Mid early March work

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-03-17T19:42:29+00:00

Mid early March work 2025-03-16 Only some updates to the lDOS kernel, and supporting tools. One changeset from last week uploaded to the lDebug repo. kernwrap Add an option to disable building of the version.com utility. This is needed to include the COM loader into ldos.com, which requires building version.com before this point.

Mid late March work

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-03-26T09:50:27+00:00

Mid late March work 2025-03-23 kernwrap Add include path so the kernpl module can include files in the ldosboot directory next to it. lDOS boot * Copy kernpl.asm file from lkernpl.asm * Allow building kernpl.asm as FreeDOS kernel payload. * Allow building kernpl.asm as Enhanced DR-DOS kernel payload. * Make fdkernpl.asm, drkernpl.asm, and lkernpl.asm just

Late March push for revised lDOS kernel

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-03-30T17:42:14+00:00

Late March push for revised lDOS kernel 2025-03-30 This week I worked on verifying and improving the lDOS kernel some. Particularly the use of segregs to address either DOSGROUP (DOS data), DOSCODEGROUP (DOS code), or DOSENTRYGROUP (a few variables in the entry section that's stuck in the Low Memory Area).

MS-DOS v3.40 versus v4.00

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-05-01T18:00:11+00:00

MS-DOS v3.40 versus v4.00 I have recently referred to the "v3.40 branch" of MS-DOS. This refers to the v4.00 and v4.01 versions that are well known and that have shipped most sources in the 2024 April release. The v3.40 distinction is as opposed to the "European MS-DOS v4.00", "Multitasking MS-DOS", or

April to early May update

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-05-12T19:26:08+00:00

April to early May update 2025-05-11 In April I was sick for several weeks. I didn't get much done during that time, and little since. However, a few things did get done. While creating the file for this blog post the HP 95LX complained about the file system being read only. This was quickly resoled by flipping the switch at the outer side of the memory card.

Mid late May rambling

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-05-26T18:18:38+00:00

Mid late May rambling 2025-05-18 No work done this week (again). 2025-05-25 No work done this week either. Have an overview of all the work done on lDOS / lMS-DOS. lDOS progress 2025-05-18 * 256 sectors per cluster: lDOS boot sectors, lDOS iniload, lDOS kernel. Missing from SYS and FORMAT (and FDISK?). (FastSeek / FastOpen also missing?)

Late May work

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-06-01T17:51:37+00:00

Late May work 2025-06-01 Little got done this week. lDebug Add opt2_dpminohlt and rename nohlt to opt1_86mnohlt. The latter is used only in Real/Virtual 86 Mode now, whereas the former is used only in Protected Mode. The opt2_dpminohlt replaces an internal flag (dpminohlt) in DIF1 that didn't provide any way to clear it without hacking the DIF1 value in the debugger's memory.

June work

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-06-29T20:30:01+00:00

June work 2025-06-29 lDOS boot * Update attribution year of testboot.asm * doc: List FreeDOS protocol file size limits (128 KiB up to 134 KiB) * doc: Update attribution year * Add mak script to build testpl.com and testboot.bin * doc: Mention the advantage of segment 200h load, mention lkernpl lDebug * doc: Add references/links to each section in the quick start insref

Early July work on x2b2 and LZEXE

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-07-06T17:10:30+00:00

Early July work on x2b2 and LZEXE 2025-07-06 x2b2 In getnum, allow underscore separator in /L= and /J= numbers, and reject hexits >= A if reading a decimal number. These changes were picked from LZEXE's COMTOEXE. Optimise the Done code and optimise BinToStr. The latter now has two entrypoints. The first accepts a table made of a dword field (at

The Microsoft EXEPACK compression format: A review

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-07-08T23:10:12+00:00

The Microsoft EXEPACK compression format: A review Working on my fork of the 2025 May LZEXE free software release, I also came into contact with Microsoft's EXEPACK. Much has been written about it elsewhere, but a few points remained unclear to me until today as I worked on LZEXE's UPACKEXE. UPACKEXE is an offline depacker for a subset of EXEPACK-packed executables.

Early mid July work on lDOS, LZEXE, and MSDebug

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-07-14T18:46:41+00:00

Early mid July work on lDOS, LZEXE, and MSDebug 2025-07-13, 2025-07-14 This week + Monday some changes were added to the lDOS kernel's comloader (the MZ exe image embedded into the ldos.com file), to the LZEXE ecm fork, and to MSDebug (the ecm fork of MS-DOS's Debug).

LZEXE data compression format

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-07-17T14:21:16+00:00

LZEXE data compression format Yesterday I added the LZEXEDAT compression method to inicomp. This currently uses a plain LZEXE format data stream, without any Meta data. The compression is done by lzexedat.exe, a DOS tool that generates the headerless compressed stream. I added the lzexedat.sh script which deals with leading dotdots then calls dosemu2. (The redirected drive does not allow to use a dotdot to go beyond its root directory, so the script will change the directory of the dosemu2 dri…

Mid July work, mostly on LZEXE re-use

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-07-22T21:08:38+00:00

Mid July work, mostly on LZEXE re-use 2025-07-20 This week I got to put LZEXEDAT, the plain LZEXE format compression, to more uses. MSDebug * doc: Update changes. * doc: List the SLD initialism and add ELD loading to ldebug-ad. * doc: Fix that parsector may be a 32-bit number.

More benchmarks on heatshrink vs lzexedat

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-07-24T17:20:43+00:00

More benchmarks on heatshrink vs lzexedat I ran some more meaningful tests comparing the heatshrink and lzexedat depackers. All of these tests are on the amd64 server without KVM. The help and ELD depack tests are with the inline literal store optimisation enabled, apparently speeding up the runs by about 10%, for both heatshrink and lzexedat.

Late July work

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-07-27T17:24:50+00:00

Late July work 2025-07-27 ACEGALS * Mention the additional indentation for pushing into lvar variables. * Link an example for pushing into lvar variable. * Note that protocol comment's header may be followed by an empty line (semicolon only) to separate it from the named sections. inicomp * Add _HEATSHRINK_FASTER option to add some code so the pointers are normalised less often. In the prior blog post we observed a depack time of 459ms prior to this change and 276ms with this change…

MBR partitioning week

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-08-12T17:28:42+00:00

MBR partitioning week 2025-08-10 This week was all about working on MBR partitioning. bootimg The bootimg.asm script gained a companion, partdisk.asm. This script allows to create a hard disk image, either raw or with a dosemu image header. (The dosemu image header makes the CHS geometry explicit, avoiding misdetection by the application to access it.)

Cleanup, InDOS, trampoline, INSTALLFIRST= lDOS kernel work in August

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-08-24T20:46:09+00:00

Cleanup, InDOS, trampoline, INSTALLFIRST= lDOS kernel work in August 2025-08-24 wwwecm scripts * Add tlsfiles to update script. * Always run mak.sh of tlsfiles, even if no update has been pulled. * Make tlsfiles an update_as_dependency * Also run mak.sh for update_as_dependency tlsfiles This repo collects all build dl wwwecm .tls files and logs them into hg for public read access using hgweb.

More work on partition scanning

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-08-24T20:44:39+00:00

More work on partition scanning 2025-08-17 This blog post is a week late, albeit I did prepare it as usual. This happened due to personal reasons. patchini * Copy patchdeb.c source text file to patchsca.c * Implement patchsca * Add patchsca.exe to mak.sh * Add display of extnames to command help of patchsca * Display current mode as a decimal and hexadecimal number

A variety of progress

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-08-30T17:34:53+00:00

A variety of progress 2025-08-30 As August's end nears, this week I did a lot of things. patchini List the supported flags as hex as well, if they are >= 16 and not part of a dual-flag entry. This makes it easier to determine how to combine flags, or specify single ones using + or -.

Early September work

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-09-14T17:48:05+00:00

Early September work 2025-09-07 fixupp To help port the default overlay manager of WarpLink to NASM, we had to use symbols starting with a dollar sign. But NASM didn't support those. (In the upcoming NASM v3.00 some support has been added.) To bridge this gap, I modified the trusty fixupp utility once again. It will now replace one or more leading "D." in section, class, or symbol names by a dollar sign each.

debug de Luxe

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-09-14T21:53:30+00:00

debug de Luxe Here's a 2023 December recommendation for lDebug that I recently found: Vintage Computer Programming LDebug — „debug de Luxe”! Roger Wilco - Dec 2, 2023 pan069 - Dec 6, 2023 ecm's webbed site Roger Wilco - Dec 6, 2023 VileR - Dec 11, 2023

Early mid September work

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-09-14T16:35:04+00:00

Early mid September work 2025-09-14 MSDebug Correct a typo in the manual's ldebug-ad section. lDebug Work on the amitsrs Extension for lDebug: * Add ONLY= keyword accepting a number or a range (FROM value TO value or FROM value LENGTH value). Only the specified multiplex numbers are listed.

Late mid September work

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-09-21T10:41:32+00:00

Late mid September work 2025-09-20 tractest/sortmap.pl Fix hex64bitstosigned function. lDebug Fix getfirstumcb in MS-DOS v5 device driver load corrupting ds. uncaps Utility that just passes execution to a different program, but uncapses the entire command line. Needed for using lredir in ldos.ini (INSTALLFIRST=, INSTALLMID=, or INSTALLLAST=) as DOS allcapses the entire configuration contents. lredir needs the exact pathname as it exists on the Linux host system.

Drive letters beyond Z:, merged DOSENTRY and DOSCODE, disk full checks, trail binary

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-09-29T18:07:48+00:00

Drive letters beyond Z:, merged DOSENTRY and DOSCODE, disk full checks, trail binary 2025-09-28 This week I took on the support for the six drive letters beyond Z:, making lDebug, devload, SRDISK, MS-DOS v7, lDOS, EDR-DOS, FreeCOM, and dosemu2 able to use them. I wrote about this

No blog post to be added in early October

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-09-30T22:17:26+00:00

No blog post to be added in early October Due to personal circumstances the next weekend will not see me prepare a blog post. blog

Setting up FreePascal (FPC) for i8086 DOS target

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-10-08T21:06:14+00:00

Setting up FreePascal (FPC) for i8086 DOS target I recently tried setting up the toolchain for building LZEXE on the amd64 Debian Linux desktop. 1. Download 2. tar -xf that file (eg in ~/proj/fpcdos) 3. Place fpclarge.sh in the same directory,

Early October updates

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-10-12T19:39:38+00:00

Early October updates 2025-10-12 MSDebug * Support FAT32 sector read and write with 21.7305 (needed on MS-DOS v7 and FreeDOS for FAT32 FS, apparently not needed on Enhanced DR-DOS). * Lock and unlock volume for sector writes using int 26 or 21.7305 (needed on MS-DOS v7, no-op otherwise). * Increment ecm release to r4. * Update manual with sector access updates, and drop it from missing features list.

Looking back at 2017's iniload

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-10-17T20:13:12+00:00

Looking back at 2017's iniload The very first revision of iniload was checked into the repo on 2017-10-03 (the annual Tag der deutschen Einheit "day of german unity", a public holiday). It only supported MS-DOS v6 / IBM-DOS, MS-DOS v7, and lDOS load (all the ones requiring subsequent loading by the "msload" stage). The latter, lDOS load, still without the "lDXX" signature. (The signature was

lDOS boot enhancements in mid October

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-10-20T20:11:30+00:00

lDOS boot enhancements in mid October 2025-10-19 lDOS boot (non-experimental) Add a list of the error condition letters used by boot.asm and boot32.asm to the manual. lDOS boot (experimental) * Display the +3 for the number of bytes available before ms7_entry if a transfer to the error_outofmemory label is included. * Optimisation: Discard LBA packet by using add sp, [si + lpSize]

Anonymous sign in now required for the hgweb server

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-10-22T19:45:02+00:00

Anonymous sign in now required for the hgweb server As discovered by Andrew Bird on the 2017 iniload review post, our hgweb server now requires a sign in. My reply there: described on the website Access to the hg.pushbx.org hgweb server is now password-protectedanonymousthe backups.hg directory ecm, at 17:16 Details The pushbx.org and ulukai.org domains, backed by the same server, recently received as many as 100_000 requests per day. Most of the involved IP addresses did not send mor…

15 years of lDebug hg repo

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-10-24T20:08:37+00:00

15 years of lDebug hg repo As of today, the oldest revision in the lDebug repo is exactly 15 years old. Here's to 15 more years! ldebug

hgweb sign-in requirement, and lDOS boot updates

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-10-26T18:07:21+00:00

hgweb sign-in requirement, and lDOS boot updates 2025-10-26 This week we celebrated the anniversary of the first lDebug revision in the hg (Mercurial) repo. Also, the hgweb server now requires anonymous sign in to access. webecm Add a news item and a blurb in the links list that the hgweb server at hg.pushbx.org now requires signing in. The password can be any nonempty string, while the user must be "

Installing apache + hgweb server locally

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-10-26T17:57:31+00:00

Installing apache + hgweb server locally This post details how to install a hgweb server locally on an amd64 Debian 12 desktop machine, as suggested in the hgweb sign-in post. Apache Run the Synaptic Package Manager, mark apache2, apache2-bin, apache2-data, and apache2-utils for installation. They are version 2.4.65-1~deb12u1 on our current setup. Also mark mercurial and mercurial-common for installation. They are version 6.3.2-1+deb12u1 for us. Install the marked packages.

First revision of page: Review of iniload control flow

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-10-27T20:34:28+00:00

First revision of page: Review of iniload control flow Today I added a review of the current iniload's control flow. Specifically, this is for the lDOS entrypoint and doesn't trace into subfunctions such as error, query_geometry, read_sector, check_clust, clust_next, clust_to_first_sector, nor the multi-sector loader.

Idiom on gardening as opposed to farming

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-11-03T19:15:18+00:00

Idiom on gardening as opposed to farming Ozy Brennan, in a 2025-11-03 article idioms amateur

Late October: Comments on lDOS boot iniload

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-11-03T15:39:18+00:00

Late October: Comments on lDOS boot iniload 2025-11-01 lDOS boot experimental * Drop references to end2 + 512 (this is no longer relevant as the late multi/progress inits now use a comparison to end3 rather than depending on two sectors being read). * Drop a comment on multi_sector_read changing si. It does, but we no longer need to preserve si as it isn't used to cache the currently loaded FAT sector any longer.

SFP Corona Core boot logo

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-11-04T17:00:20+00:00

SFP Corona Core boot logo [SFP Corona boot logo] Image description: A logo, consisting of white on black text that reads "SFP CORONA Version 0.1". There is also hard-to-read dark blue and dark red text, reading (blue) "Microsoft (R)" (red) "MS-DOS 7.10" (blue) "Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. 1981-1999". Image description end.

Early November work on lDebug, old builds repack

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-11-09T19:02:53+00:00

Early November work on lDebug, old builds repack 2025-11-09 lDebug * Document tsc.eld in the manual. * quiet.asm: Drop unused msg.org left over from aformat.asm * Document quiet.eld in the manual. * reserve.asm: Drop the separator spam. * Document reserve.eld in the manual. * Document kcmdline.eld in the manual. * Bugfix: In rr.asm, make sure to call prephack before dohack. Would crash after an early

Idiom on long letters

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-11-09T22:06:10+00:00

Idiom on long letters the video "Movies Are Better Than TV Shows and I'm Tired of Pretending They're Not" idioms youtube

lDebug and lDOS boot experimental loader support

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-11-17T20:02:23+00:00

lDebug and lDOS boot experimental loader support 2025-11-16 LZEXE In the lzexedat.sh script, redirect the null device into the dosemu2 process to avoid accidentally activating the input detection of the bootloadable lDebug (in the line if (rc == 0 && ioi == 0) then q). lDOS boot experimental * boot32: Note magic bytes for loader support. This is to allow patching the first stage loader so it assumes its second stage (FSIBOOT) is already present in memory, rather than trying to load it fro…

Idiom: Make from scratch

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-11-19T21:32:23+00:00

Idiom: Make from scratch Carl Sagan idioms youtube

No regulation post this week (mid late November)

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-11-23T19:55:57+00:00

No regulation post this week (mid late November) This week I have only worked a little on the new loader, but I haven't uploaded any of these changes yet. I expect to upload some work within the tail of November. blog loader

Late November work on the pre-boot loader

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-11-30T17:01:24+00:00

Late November work on the pre-boot loader 2025-11-30 The prior two weeks we drafted some interfaces and a rough implementation of the pre-boot loader that's based on the debugger. Because the loader is a stripped down build of the debugger, many of its features come for free (or almost so), including:

Early December: Loader application and MCP

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-09T16:35:12+00:00

Early December: Loader application and MCP 2025-12-07 lDOS boot (experimental) * Add an include and equates to iniload source text to allow replacing the payload inclusion section. * Fix several spots in iniload.asm and multboot.asm to use the new equates. This is intended to be used by the MCP to support its more complex payload architecture. By using equates, the payloads can also be placed in their own sections (using the multi-section binary format of NASM) rather than all in the sin…

Early mid December work on the MCP

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-16T12:30:31+00:00

Early mid December work on the MCP 2025-12-14 lDOS boot (experimental) Put the payload label into the part that's replaced by _INILOAD_PAYLOAD_INCLUDE. This is to prepare for additional signatures to be included before the payload, possibly for use by patchini/patldos to find additional lCFG blocks. MCP * Adjust for the lDOS boot change, put payload label into iniloadi.asm file.

Scriptlet to find obsolete attribution years (in lDebug)

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-17T22:42:32+00:00

Scriptlet to find obsolete attribution years (in lDebug) I've used this scriptlet: ldebug/source$ ls -l --sort=time -gG --full-time $(grep 'Copyright.*202[0-4]' -Ei *.asm -l) Any files listed at the top with last-modified stamps of the year 2025 are suspect.

Mid December: Last regular blog post of 2025

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-21T18:15:44+00:00

Mid December: Last regular blog post of 2025 2025-12-21 This is the last regular blog post of the year. There may be some irregular ones still. ident86 * Fix typos in the manual. * Fix screvid.but hyperlink to lead to the ident86 repo rather than lDebug's. Master Control Program * Add lDOS pre-boot loader to kernel payload, and allow loading it from the boot menu.

Restoring modified files from NASM listing files

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-23T21:41:09+00:00

Restoring modified files from NASM listing files I accidentally reset a repo using the hg strip -f command, which destroys unsaved changes in the current working directory. I still had the original .lst listing files created by NASM, however. These turned out to be expressive enough to completely restore the deleted changes in this case.

Late December work on lDebug and Extensions for lDebug

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-12-30T00:39:15+00:00

Late December work on lDebug and Extensions for lDebug Non-regulation blog post. * Doc formatting update in eld-patchqry section. * In news-r10 mention the new patch query flag which forces single-sector operation. * doc: In quickstart link to all chapter sections. * doc: Update cmdhelp-instsect. * doc: Document need for calling yy_reset_buf for certain ELD operations. * doc: Update currently used NASM version from 2023-10-11. * Clarify ivSetup protocol comments, particularly t…