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Text File | 1991-01-02 | 22.3 KB | 794 lines

This document describes the program TINYPROG.EXE. Tranzoa, Co. P.O. Box 911 Maple Valley, WA 98038 (206) 432-3532 ----------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT TINYPROG DOES FOR YOU Makes EXE or COM file programs smaller. Stops corrupted or patched programs from running. Makes EXE files as easy to self-configure as COM files. Encrypts programs to make internal text unreadable. ----------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT TINYPROG NEEDS TO RUN PC or compatible computer. DOS 2.x or higher. 90k bytes of memory plus 10k bytes for every 2500 relocation table entries in EXE files to be converted. ----------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT PROGRAMS CONVERTED BY TINYPROG NEED PC or compatible computer. DOS 2.x or higher. Possibly more memory than the original program. (See below.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1 HOW TO RUN TINYPROG C>TINYPROG original.exe smaller.exe or C>TINYPROG original.com smaller.exe These commands convert the file, ORIGINAL.xxx into SMALLER.EXE. If ORIGINAL.xxx is over a few K bytes in size, SMALLER.EXE will be from 10% to 50% smaller. When run, SMALLER may load slightly slower from RAM disks and hard disks than ORIGINAL.xxx did. But, you may not be able to detect the difference. C>TINYPROG original.exe or C>TINYPROG original.com These commands convert the file, ORIGINAL.xxx into the file, ORIGINAL.EXE. The original program file, ORIGINAL.xxx is copied to ORIGINAL.BXE if the file, ORIGINAL.BXE does not already exist. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 2 RESTRICTIONS Special programs............................................ TINYPROG will not work on these programs: COMMAND.COM IBMBIO.COM IBMDOS.COM These programs are COM files in name only, and MUST NOT be converted! Device drivers.............................................. Device drivers cannot be converted by TINYPROG. As a precaution, TINYPROG will not convert files with .SYS or .BIN file name extensions, or files that TINYPROG senses to be DOS device drivers. Self-configuring programs................................... A few programs configure themselves by writing data back to the program file, itself. They cannot read or write a copy of themselves that has been converted by TINYPROG. Many will sense if their program file is not as they expect. Some programs of this type do not check! They simply clobber the TINYPROG'ed version of themselves. Usually, you can use TINYPROG to convert this type of program after you have configured the program. Programs with internal overlays............................. TINYPROG may sense programs that contain overlay modules in their own program file. (See below.) Otherwise................................................... Run TINYPROG on any other program, either EXE or COM file, that you want to convert. If TINYPROG tells you to use the /A, /C, or /I options, and the program you are converting is not your own, stop right there. You should not convert this program. 3 The request for the /A option tells you that this program has already been TINYPROG'ed. Doing it again may harm the program by throwing away special, 'user- data,' information that the program contains. The request for the /C option tells you that TINYPROG thinks that the input file is both a COM file and is too big to be a good COM file. The request for the /I option tells you that this program cannot be run through TINYPROG without losing some of the original program file. If you do not know what that program's extra file information is (overlays?), you are safer to leave the program alone. Run the converted program to verify that all is well. Keep a copy of the original program backed-up somewhere, of course. Use DOS commands to copy/rename the converted program to the original program file name. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 4 PAY TO PLAY Programmers: If you use TINYPROG to make yourself money or to save time or trouble, then you and your organization will want to feel good about yourselves. We will, too. If you are a software developer, you probably know that highly optimized assembly language and custom data compression algorithms don't come easy. So, please send to Tranzoa the price - to you - of the alternative to TINYPROG, plus 1/10th of what TINYPROG is worth to you beyond that alternative. Or, 15 dollars. Whichever is more. Naturally, we will send to you a copy of TINYPROG without the "shareware irritant" - the random number prompt. Oh, by the way, your program will be clearly converted by TINYPROG. Users: Well, what's disk space cost, anyway? Not much. So we don't expect much in return. But if it's your turn to chip in for that vast, "free-software" universe that we all use to make our PC's valuable, please keep Tranzoa in mind. Everybody: There are two versions of this program. One version, you have paid Tranzoa for; the other, you did not. Which version do you have? The paid-for version does not ask you to type a random number when it converts a program. The version that you paid for is yours to use where and when you wish. But if someone else is using your copy, you should not be using it. The other program version (the one that you did not pay Tranzoa for), you may use, copy, and give to whomever you choose. You may not resell it, though, for more than a nominal charge (in mid-1990: $10) either alone or in combination with any other product without getting the OK from Tranzoa. Of course, programs that you convert with TINYPROG are your own business and responsibility. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 5 TINYPROG COMMAND LINE OPTIONS To detect command line options, TINYPROG understands both '/' and '-'. You must rename files whose names begin with the dash ('-') character in order to run TINYPROG on them. The command line options can actually be in any order, to the left or right of the file names. Here are the details of the command line options: /A This switch tells TINYPROG to convert a file even though the file looks like it has already been produced by TINYPROG. We use this switch in testing. /C This switch tells TINYPROG to create the output EXE file even though the input file, which is not an EXE file, is really too long to be a reasonable COM file. /I This switch tells TINYPROG to convert an EXE file even though the EXE file is too much longer than its "load image." The "load image" is a value in the EXE file's header that tells DOS how much of the file to load into memory. If the file has data past the next even 128 bytes beyond the "load image," TINYPROG won't convert the EXE file without this switch option. /H This switch option tells TINYPROG to write this documentation out to a given file or to the DOS STDOUT device if no file name is given. If a given file name exists, TINYPROG asks you whether you want to overwrite it before doing so. /U These options allow you to put clear-text, unencrypted, uncompressed "user-data" at the top of your output EXE file. This option takes its own options in quite a few ways. Here are some examples: /Ut "\r\n (C) Copyright 2001 Zingo, Inc.\r\n" Puts the text string in the user-data area. To put text with embedded spaces into the user-data area, type the whole string inside double quotes. These two options are equivalent: 6 /Ut1234567890 /Ut 1234567890 These options are equivalent: /Ub 12 100 (put 100 bytes of value decimal 12) /Ub 0xC 100 (the numbers can be in hex, C-style) /uB 12 0x64 -ub 014 100 (the numbers can be leading-zero octal) -ub014 100 (the numbers can be fairly free-form) -ub12,100 /UB 12,100 There are four ways to put user-data into your program. In one command line you can use any or all of these ways, in any order you choose. The final user-data will be in the order given in the command line with no extra bytes put between separately- given data. Your final user-data area must be under 60k bytes in length. Here are the four ways of specifying user-data: ASCII Text: You may specify simple ASCII text. In the text strings, you may specify non-ASCII byte values using these extended C language conventions: \a Bell \b Backspace \f Form feed \n Line feed \r Carriage return \t Tab \v Vertical tab \z Control Z (End_of_file) \- Minus sign/dash \/ Forward slash \' Single quote \" Double quote \\ Back-slash \? Question mark \xHHH Hex value \DDD Octal value \_ Ignored (Used for null-string: "\_") The text is put in the program without any extra information. To put a trailing NULL character in the text, simple use the '\0' character sequence at the end of your string. Examples: /UT "text" /ut "\r\n Howdy, howdy, howdy.\r\n" /ut "I say, \"What's up, Doc.\"" /ut "\a beep" -ut "A normal C string\0" 7 Byte values: You may specify blocks of data in which every byte has the same value. Examples: /UB 0 2048 (2k of zeros) -ub -1 100 (100 Hex FF's) /UB -128 1 (1 Hex 80 byte) /UB 255 1 (1 Hex FF byte) Word (16 bit) values: You may specify blocks of data in which every 16-bit word has the same value. The words are stored low-byte-first and are not aligned on even word boundaries. Examples: /Uw 0 2048 (4k of zeros) -uw -1 100 (200 Hex FF's) /Uw -128 1 (1 Hex 0080 word) /UW 255 1 (1 Hex 00FF word) /uw -32768 2 (2 words of Hex 8000) /uw 65535 7 (7 words of Hex FFFF) /uw -1 4 (4 words of Hex FFFF) Files: You may include an entire file. TINYPROG copies the file as binary data to the user-data area. Examples (these options are all equivalent): /uFX.Y (puts the file X.Y into user-data area) /uf x.y /ufx.y Finally, here are some complex examples: /ut"MY_PROGRAM \0" /ut "5/26/90" /ub 0x20 32 /uf DATA_FILE.DAT /ut "Overlay1\0" /uf OVER1.EXE /utOverlay2\0 /ufOVER2.EXE 8 Here is the structure of the user-data area and the top of a TINYPROG-produced EXE file: The first 32 bytes are the EXE file header. This header tells DOS what it needs to know to load and run the program. The next 3 bytes are a jump instruction to jump over the user data area. The first of these 3 bytes is the JMP op-code. The next two bytes are 1 word with the length in bytes of the user-data area + 1. The next 0..60k bytes are the user-data area. The user data area is followed by a Control Z and the initial TINYPROG code. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 9 PROGRAMMERS, WHAT TINYPROG DOES TO YOUR PROGRAM TINYPROG compresses your program and adds to it new code that decompresses your program whenever it is run. TINYPROG can also add, to the front of the EXE file, uncompressed, unencrypted data and text that you specify. When your program runs, the TINYPROG code decrypts and does a Cyclical Redundancy Check (CRC) on the compressed program. Then the TINYPROG code decompresses your program and jumps to the real program beginning. If the TINYPROG logic finds a CRC mis- match or if the decompression logic is not happy, the program prints an error message to the screen and exits with an ERRORLEVEL of 255. The error messages are sent to the DOS STDERR file handle. This file handle usually points to the PC's screen - even when the user redirects normal output (the STDOUT file handle) to a file. Here are the two messages and their meanings: TINYPROG says, "Bad program file!" The file was not loaded as an EXE program, or the program failed the CRC test. TINYPROG says, "Patched program!" The decompression logic found something horrible. This implies either a bug in the compression/decompression logic or a patch that escaped the CRC check. Tranzoa wants to know about this message. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 10 THE COST OF TINYPROG'ING YOUR PROGRAM Beyond the zillions you send to Tranzoa, here is the price you pay for a smaller program file and file-corruption self- testing: 1) Slower loading. Our benchmark, 215k program compresses to 140k. (It has 40k of "help" text but no big, zeroed memory blocks.) Loading the program on a 4.77 megahertz XT takes an extra 30k per second beyond disk-read time. On a 25 megahertz 386, only from RAM disk is the extra load time perceptible. And then, barely so. 2) You can't patch the code. You may, though, put a patch/configuration area in front of the program file. Example: the copyright at the top of TINYPROG, itself. 3) TINYPROG output-programs must be .EXE files. (See below.) 4) Unusual programs may require more memory to load and run. (See below.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- TINYPROG OUTPUTS .EXE PROGRAMS When you run a normal EXE program, DOS insures that there is sufficient memory to run the program. COM programs must check for themselves. If TINYPROG were to output COM programs, extra code would be included with your program to check memory. This code takes more space than the EXE file "header" that TINYPROG includes with your program. The EXE file header and its information would be the only difference between a EXE file and a COM file put out by TINYPROG. ----------------------------------------------------------------- MEMORY REQUIREMENTS TINYPROG adds extra code to your program. This code needs approximately 1.5k bytes beyond your program's "load image" to operate. What is a "load image?" The load image of a COM file is its file length. EXE files contain their load image size in some extra information at the top of the file called the "header." Normally, both types of programs need more memory to 11 run in than their load image size. Except for extremely simple or unusual programs, the extra memory needed to run the program exceeds 1.5k by a good margin. So, in a sense, the TINYPROG version of your program needs NO extra memory. There is a notable exception to this "no extra memory" requirement: certain EXE programs have no initial stack specified. These programs are dangerous to run with less than 64k of memory remaining. TINYPROG converts these programs in a way that makes them safe. Without enough memory, DOS will simply not load them. A few EXE programs tell DOS to give them only a certain amount of memory to run in. When the added TINYPROG code sets up the run-time environment for such programs, it may cause DOS to give these programs slightly more memory than would have been the case with the original program. ----------------------------------------------------------------- OVERLAYS We're sorry. Since overlaid programs are usually big, they certainly could use TINYPROG compression! There are, of course, ways to compress overlays. But we must wait for the linkage editor people to want the ability. ----------------------------------------------------------------- LONG .COM OR OTHER FILES In testing, you may have found that TINYPROG accepts any input file name other than the special DOS files, .BIN and .SYS files. So, you can tell TINYPROG to convert a large data file into an EXE file. If the data file has code up front, it will actually run as a program. Now, TINYPROG will convert these long non-EXE files, but when they load as programs, their stack will be at the end of their 64k segment, presumably in the middle of the loaded program. You can count on a few 10's of bytes in that area being clobbered even if you swap the stack right at the top of the program. ----------------------------------------------------------------- CPU PROTECTED MODE OPERATION The code TINYPROG adds to your program uses segment register arithmetic. This arithmetic will not work in protected mode. But, it will work in VM-86 mode on a 386 or 486 CPU. 12 ----------------------------------------------------------------- USER DATA AREA Currently, the user-patch-area is not in RAM when your program gets control of the CPU. At run-time you must read it from the program file. (Under DOS 2.x, this may not be possible. Generally, you must tell your user to run your program another way, or ask him for the explicit name, or do tricks to find the original command line in memory.) How to Patch the User Data Area The user data area starts at the 35th byte of your program's EXE file. Its length + 1 is in the 31st and 32nd bytes as a low- byte-first word. The data is in the order of how it was given in the command line. ----------------------------------------------------------------- June 8, 1990 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 13