DMSDos

While trying to see if STAC ever went into the disk compression busness again, I ran across this interesting bit of software, DMSDOS, which is a kernel module for versions 2.0.36 and 2.2.3 of the Linux kernel support read/write access to STACKER version 3 and 4 containers.  It also support’s MS-DOS’s drive space, and doublespace!

The latest version dmsdos-0.9.2.3-pre2-alt2.tar.gz even runs on modern x86_64 and i386 boxes!  Although in library mode.

# ./mcdmsdos list /tmp/STACVOL.000
mcdmsdos version 0.2.0 (for libdmsdos 0.9.x and newer)
libdmsdos: DMSDOS library version 0.9.2pl3-pre2(alpha test) compiled Jun 12 2014 17:14:06 with options: read-write, doublespace/drivespace(<3), drivespace 3, stacker 3, stacker 4
libdmsdos: mounting CVF on device 0x3 read-write…
libdmsdos: CVF end padding 1 sectors.
libdmsdos: CVF is in stacker 4 format.
-rwxr-xr-x 1 0 0 10396254 Dec 16 1993 13:35 doom.wad
-rwxr-xr-x 1 0 0 68923 Dec 15 1993 01:01 setup.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 0 0 20850 Dec 15 1993 01:01 readme.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 0 0 627155 Dec 16 1993 13:53 u1_94.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 0 0 579187 Dec 16 1993 13:47 doom.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 0 0 439 Dec 15 1993 01:01 file_id.diz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 0 0 190 Dec 15 1993 01:01 use1_95.bat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 0 0 218 Dec 15 1993 01:01 use1_94.bat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 0 0 7527 Dec 15 1993 01:01 license.doc

How cool?

Even better it can extract files from the stacker volume!

# ./mcdmsdos copyout /tmp/STACVOL.000 /doom.wad doom.wad
mcdmsdos version 0.2.0 (for libdmsdos 0.9.x and newer)
libdmsdos: DMSDOS library version 0.9.2pl3-pre2(alpha test) compiled Jun 12 2014 17:14:06 with options: read-write, doublespace/drivespace(<3), drivespace 3, stacker 3, stacker 4
libdmsdos: mounting CVF on device 0x3 read-write…
libdmsdos: CVF end padding 1 sectors.
libdmsdos: CVF is in stacker 4 format.
# md5sum doom.wad 981b03e6d1dc033301aa3095acc437ce doom.wad
#

And if you google ‘981b03e6d1dc033301aa3095acc437ce’ you’ll know it’s the registered DOOM version 1.1 data file!

The author tired to get it to work with Microsoft Visual C, and it does not.  It also doesn’t work with MinGW or Cygwin, and the reason is once more again the way GCC handles it’s structures on Linux vs Windows.  Sadly there is no silverbullet fix for this, the structures oddly enough are too small on Windows, and too big for what they should be on Linux.

But at any rate, I though it was cool.  For anyone interested all versions that I’ve found I put online on my cvs server, unix.superglobalmegacorp.com.

4 thoughts on “DMSDos

  1. Another story about structure field problems? This is why you’re not meant to use structures when you care about the binary representation 🙁

    • which is a shame, as structures are taught as binary representations of data.

      No wonder I had so many issues trying to migrate data out of 16bit pascal into 16bit/32bit C, and why text mode was the way to go…

      shame on all the vendors trying to outthink data structures.

      • I think I was taught that most compilers pack things in a certain way, but some don’t, so don’t assume anything if you want to be portable 🙂

        • Yeah I’ve dealt with “database” stuff where it was quicker and easier to just dump to ASCII, and re-import.

          I don’t see how having it ‘break all logic’ as the default is a good thing. Somewhere some neckbeard is all smug about screwing up all kinds of data. Instead aligning by word/dword boundaries for games like that should have been something you had to explicitly turn on, you know for internal structures where it doesn’t matter, unlike say data to disk or network for exchange where it freaking matters which is which and where. Grrrrrr

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