From: Barzilai Spinak (barspi@wam.umd.edu)
Date: 05/31/93


From: barspi@wam.umd.edu (Barzilai Spinak)
Subject: Re: dosemu and windows
Date: 31 May 1993 15:08:06 GMT

In article <1uc2j0$8ad@agate.berkeley.edu> garrett@sba70.berkeley.edu (Garrett D'Amore) writes:
>Barzilai Spinak (barspi@wam.umd.edu) wrote:
>
>: (Listen, I don't know what I'm talking about...)
>: I think that what you mean is emulating the MS-Windoze API. I don't think
>: that is too difficult, (tiresome maybe, but not difficult), and any book on
>: Windoze programming gives a list of the calls and everything. But I think that
>: there's more to Windoze than that. And you always have the case of ill-behaved
>: programs who will do something unexpected.
>
>In defense of the original post, I don't think _you_ know what you're
>talking about. The Windows API calls are compiled into assembly to call
>a given function at a specific address (I don't know how *.DLL's
>complicate the issue) or a specific interrupt number. I think it is
>technically feasible to write an "interpreter" for Windows *.EXEs that
>calls its own internal functions whenever a specific call to certain API

   This is just what I was trying to say. Sorry if I didn't explain it well.
But I wasn't so far away from the real thing, eh?

>addresses are made. Getting the "map" of API addresses from Microsoft
>would probably be a major feat in itself. Reverse engineering might do
>the trick, but it is a little more than a weekend hack :-)

   Do you really need the addresses, or just the function numbers or something
like that? Just asking...

>What we're talking about here as an "executive" of sorts, that would be
>able to "run" Windows .EXEs, mostly be trapping calls to API functions
>and calling Linux or X-Windows equivalents. This is very similiar (I
>think -- I've not looked at the source) to the way dosemu works, only
>the map of functions for DOS is *well* documented, and the complexity of

  Exactly. Is that soooo difficult? (Not that I can do it...)
[...]

+---------------------------------+
| Barzilai Spinak |
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| (-O-O-) barspi@eng.umd.edu |
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