Category Archives: random updates

For the love of Pascal

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I don’t make much of a secret of it, but while I was in high school, and the first year of college, I loved Pascal. And not just any Pascal, but Borland Turbo Pascal 5.5 .

While in highschool, we used these Unix “like” work stations, the “ICON” running QNX. Since it was another one of those built by Canadians for Canadians type thing we couldn’t use Borland, instead we used this knockoff called Turing. While the bootleg floppy I had of Turing gave up the ghost (bad sectors, argh!) I recall that it was strictly interpreted, and they did have a version that ran on MS-DOS..

Anyways, fast forward and I moved to the United States, and of course we didn’t use weird knockoffs, we used.. Borland Pascal.

And it compiled.

Oh, and it could build TSR’s!

Man it was AWESOME. I even could coax it to run in protected mode, along with dosx.exe, the dos extender bundled in Windows 3.1 . Although much to my dismay, only ‘tiny’ or programs restricted to 64kb could run in this mode, as the libraries were not even slightly protected mode safe. In my opinion between the industry at the time holding so dearly to the brain dead 80286, and charging a FORTUNE for protected mode tools, it really did drive people mad.

Anyways I eventually had to come to terms with C, but I’ll admit, for the first while, I used EMX under OS/2 and p2c (GNU p2c Pascal), as a great crutch.

So while browsing around, I came to some bbs source code page, And I was surprised to see a few things… An early BBS for Unix SYS III, another one for Xenix, and WWIV when it was all in Pascal, ported from version 3.0 to 7.0. And they (among all the others) include SOURCE CODE!

Then searching with a ‘known known’, I turned up this excellent resource in Russia, pascal.sources.ru, which has a good amount of pascal source.

A while back, I did take the Pascal source to TradeWars 2001, and port it to C, so maybe I’ll do something with this wealth of Pascal source…

And of course, for anyone feeling retro, don’t forget, that Turbo Pascal 5.5 is free! (like beer), and runs under DOSBox.

Windows 95 2.1Ghz CPU limit broken!

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This is great news to some of us! Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave, Windows 95 had issues running on CPU’s running over 300Mhz. Any attempt to do so will yield the following error:

While initializing device IOS:
Windows Protection Error. You need to restart your computer.

Then there was an “AMD” fix (that worked fine on intel cpu’s) that would raise the bar to 2.1 Ghz. However beyond that point, the networking would break, and cause Windows 95 to fail with the following error:

While initializing device NDIS:
Windows Protection Error. You need to restart your computer.

Well it seems that the device drivers from the Dial-up networking update 1.4 actually address this issue, however it’s hard to install an update that gets bound into a ‘blob’ when you can’t boot.

However, the LoneCrusader on MSFN has come up with a fixpack!

And it’s simple to apply, just start a normal Windows 95 install (I’m using Windows 95a, the first CD version) and then once it reboots, just boot off the provided floppy image, and it’ll slipstream in the fixed kernel, ndis handler and a bunch of other stuff. Then reboot again, and carry on.

It works so well, that I loaded it on my 3 Ghz P4, however I got this disastrous message:

Insufficient memory to initialize Windows.

Quit one or more memory-resident programs or remove unnecessary utilities from your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, and restart your computer.

Which after a little bit of searching, comes down to the fact that I have 1GB of ram in my P4. A lot of people talk about tuning the vcache as it’ll initialize far too big, and not leave enough memory for Windows 95 to actually operate. I had no luck there, but with more searching I found an easier fix..

Instead, just limit the amount of memory that Windows 95 will initialize. KB184447 talks about this, and I’ve found this works as an optimal setting for my system.ini:

[386Enh]
MaxPhysPage=39900

[vcache]
MinFileCache=65536
MaxFileCache=131072
chunksize=2048
namecache=4096

Using these settings, I’m limited to 921MB of ram, but honestly an environment that was built to run on 4MB systems, and comfortably in 8MB of ram, 921MB is just fine. So far I’ve installed Internet Explorer 5.5 on my P4, and all is well. In addition, it works great on Virtual PC, as even some emulators are fast enough that they too run into these old timing bugs.

Naturally, PCI bus users (is that everyone now?) will want this update from intel, (infinst_enu.exe / mirror) which will update a bunch of core components in Windows 95 to allow it to function better. I should add that both on Virtual PC, and my p4, that once the PCI update is installed, I went into the device manager, and removed the default VGA adapter, and my graphics was running correctly. The only weird thing is the ATI Graphics Ultra Pro PCI (mach32) would crash Windows 95 if I ran it at 256 colors, however it works fine in both 16 color and 16bit (65536 color) mode.

Windows 95 921MB of ram

Windows 95 921MB of ram

Just remember to NOT overwrite the newer files, otherwise Windows 95 won’t boot anymore.

For all you Xenix fans out there….

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You are going to LOVE this…. Celestial Software, has two great directories stuff with all kinds of neat software for xenix.

First in the gnu, directory, you’ll find all kinds of newer builds of gcc 2.5.8, and libg++ 2.5.3

And in the software section, there is a bunch of stuff like ckermit, cnews, elm, gtar, joe, perl, rzsz, samba, smail, tripwire…

I, myself haven’t loaded any of it, but I know many people out there will get a kick out of this.

WAMP server 2.1d

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I haven’t checked the list to see what is going on, but WAMP server has gone through yet another permutation…

2.1d x86

2.1d x64

There is some noise on the forum, I think as some of us are rushing sourceforge, we aren’t getting fully formed downloads so there some corruption going on… and other issues…

Considering how popular WAMP is there is no way I could host it…..

Some quake 1 links

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Well last night I wanted to test my quake build on a real quake server… So looking around I found this great site, QuakeOne. So I used the full pak files I got from buying Quake (yet again) on steam, and went through and downloaded some mega map download (remember maps go in c:\quake\id1\maps), and combed through the server list and found a few servers to connect to.

The great thing is it worked.

It worked well enough that not only did the DOSBox test worked, but also running it through Qemu and Virtual PC. I configured Qemu & Virtual PC to use their own NAT solution, and they both worked fine. Since the PCAP thing can be a little crazy for DOSBox I’m thinking about trying to merge in the SLiRP code from Qemu into it, to provide ‘user mode networking’… It’s worked well enough for SIMH, so I don’t see why not.

Oh and speaking of quake, Qaddicted has some great information as well.

Well this freaking sucks.

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Turns out people are poisoning everything out there.

From: Gregory Perry
To: “[email protected]”
Subject: OpenBSD Crypto Framework
Thread-Topic: OpenBSD Crypto Framework
Thread-Index: AcuZjuF6cT4gcSmqQv+Fo3/+2m80eg==
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2010 23:55:25 +0000
Message-ID: <8D3222F9EB68474DA381831A120B1023019AC034@mbx021-e2-nj-5.exch021.domain.local>
Accept-Language: en-US
Content-Language: en-US
X-MS-Has-Attach:
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”iso-8859-1″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
MIME-Version: 1.0
Status: RO

Hello Theo,

Long time no talk. If you will recall, a while back I was the CTO at NETSEC and arranged funding and donations for the OpenBSD Crypto Framework. At that same time I also did some consulting for the FBI, for their GSA Technical Support Center, which was a cryptologic reverse engineering project aimed at backdooring and implementing key escrow mechanisms for smart card and other hardware-based computing
technologies.

My NDA with the FBI has recently expired, and I wanted to make you aware of the fact that the FBI implemented a number of backdoors and side channel key leaking mechanisms into the OCF, for the express purpose of monitoring the site to site VPN encryption system implemented by EOUSA, the parent organization to the FBI. Jason
Wright and several other developers were responsible for those backdoors, and you would be well advised to review any and all code commits by Wright as well as the other developers he worked with originating from NETSEC.

This is also probably the reason why you lost your DARPA funding, they more than likely caught wind of the fact that those backdoors were present and didn’t want to create any derivative products based upon the same.

This is also why several inside FBI folks have been recently advocating the use of OpenBSD for VPN and firewalling implementations in virtualized environments, for example Scott Lowe is a well respected author in virtualization circles who also happens top be on the FBI payroll, and who has also recently published several tutorials for the use of OpenBSD VMs in enterprise VMware vSphere deployments.

Merry Christmas…

Gregory Perry
Chief Executive Officer
GoVirtual Education

“VMware Training Products & Services”

540-645-6955 x111 (local)
866-354-7369 x111 (toll free)
540-931-9099 (mobile)
877-648-0555 (fax)

Honestly I don’t know what that means for people who want privacy. Basically trust no one, trust nothing..

And certainly don’t run OpenBSD in a VMWare environment.

The only wikilleaks post worth repeating:

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zS E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 LONDON 000368
NOFORN
SIPDIS
DOE FOR GPERSON, CHAYLOCK
EO 12958 DECL: 12/12/2018
TAGS EPET, ENRG, PGOV, RS”>RS, NI
SUBJECT: ENGLAND: RELIABILITY AND LONGEVITY OF UK-US RELATIONSHIP CONFIRMED
REF: A. LONDON 365 B. LONDON 366
Classified By: Consul General Robbie Honerkamp for reasons 1.4 (B) and (D )

1. (S/NF) Summary: We’re no strangers to love. You know the rules and so do I.
A full commitment’s what I’m thinking of. You wouldn’t get this from any other guy.
I just wanna tell you how I’m feeling. Gotta make you understand.

2. (C/NF) Chorus: Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.

3. (S/NF) We’ve known each other for so long Your heart’s been aching but You’re too shy to say it
Inside we both know what’s been going on We know the game and we’re gonna play it
And if you ask me how I’m feeling Don’t tell me you’re too blind to see

4. (C/NF) Chorus: Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.

5. (C/NF) Chorus: Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.

6. (C/NF) Background Singers: (Ooh, give you up) (Ooh, give you up) (Ooh) Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up) (Ooh) Never gonna give, never gonna give (Give you up)

7. (S/NF) We’ve know each other for so long Your heart’s been aching but You’re too shy to say it
Inside we both know what’s been going on We know the game and we’re gonna play it
I just wanna tell you how I’m feeling Gotta make you understand

8. (C/NF) Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.

9. (C/NF) Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.

10. (C/NF) Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you. ASTLEY