From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Feb 28 16:33:24 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA29778 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 28 Feb 1997 16:33:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from odin.visigenic.com (odin.visigenic.com [204.179.98.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA29769 for ; Fri, 28 Feb 1997 16:33:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from VSI48 (vsi48.visigenic.com [206.64.15.185]) by odin.visigenic.com (Netscape Mail Server v2.02) with SMTP id AAA11378; Fri, 28 Feb 1997 16:30:13 -0800 Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970228163329.00ac4480@visigenic.com> X-Sender: toneil@visigenic.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 16:33:29 -0800 To: Adrian Chadd From: "Tim Oneil" Subject: Re: Java binary support in FreeBSD ... Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk At 01:42 PM 3/1/97 +0800, you wrote: >Extending it to cover DOS binaries, etc, wouldn't be hard (for dos .EXE >Dont' you look for 'MZ' at the beginning of the file? Com files will be >different, since they are just an image of a segment of code to throw in >memory, with no real discernable headers. Its more than looking for the executable module signature of DOS binaries, isn't it? I mean, DOS binaries have some pretty funky and backward memory management requirements. You've got to create a virtual chunk of so-called "real memory" for it, becuase dos will load an address selector/offset, turn around and do something else in its brief, broken, sickly way that only it can manage, then come back to that selector and due to the ravages (to DOS) of virtual memory management, suddenly find what it expected to be in that selector gone, and break. I mean, theres just a whole lot more to emulating DOS than that.