DOS ain't dead

Fork of LZEXE, ecm release 2+ (Announce)

posted by ecm  , Düsseldorf, Germany, 29.06.2025, 20:39

I just uploaded a blog post mostly about the development of my LZEXE fork: https://pushbx.org/ecm/dokuwiki/blog/pushbx/2025/0629_june_work#lzexe

I managed to shrink the depacker stub somewhat for my LZX0 format (and the experimental LZE0 to LZE6 along the way). This shrinking is fourfold: Generic optimisations, dropping the relocation table if it is empty, dropping the segment change handling if the original executable image is smaller than 40 KiB, and changing the stub so it doesn't inline the getbit function (a tradeoff of size against speed).

I also ported things so NASM, FreePascal, WarpLink, gcc (ia16 or host target), and bash can be used to build everything, albeit the current release is still built using TurboPascal 5.0 as yet.

The download, repo, and manual are all linked in https://pushbx.org/ecm/web/#projects-lzexe

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Complete thread:

• Fork of LZEXE, ecm release 2+ - ecm, 29.06.2025, 20:39 (Announce)
  • Fork of LZEXE, ecm release 2+ - Guti, 03.07.2025, 09:54
    • Fork of LZEXE, ecm release 2+ - Guti, 04.07.2025, 12:34