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In the DOS days the operating system was mostly just a boot loader and a set of tools. Whichever program happened to be running at any given time would have com
by InclinedPlane 11y ago
In the DOS days the operating system was mostly just a boot loader and a set of tools. Whichever program happened to be running at any given time would have complete control over the system. So a program could simply find out where any other program was in memory and modify it, which for something like changing a string was fairly easy.
- bananaboy 11y agoYeah sure, I know, so I suppose they could have modified the string in memory. But he specifically says that he "hex edited the error in the memory manager itself", which makes it sound like he modified an executable. A programmer wouldn't say he hex edited a string in memory when what he meant was he wrote some code to replace the string in memory.
- rybosome 11y agoMaybe DOS allowed one to to statically link OS-provided libraries? I have no clue, this was way before my time.
- bananaboy 11y agoThere were no OS-provided libraries, only a documented list of software interrupt calls you could use! Ah the old days..
- InclinedPlane 11y agoI assume that part of the story was mangled in the telling/re-telling.