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From: roelofs@nas.nasa.gov (Cave Newt)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: EXE2BIN
Message-ID: <1990Nov13.092030.10586@nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 13 Nov 90 09:20:30 GMT
References: <45890@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
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In article <45890@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> v067qklp@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu writes:

>Hi.  I wrote a utility in Shareware First Modula-2 Compiler to capture the 
>screen and either dump it to a file or retrieve from the file a saved screen 
>and then redraw the screen.  However, I'd like to convert this EXE to a binary 
>file which I could keep loaded while in DBASE-III+.
>
>EXE2BIN always seems to return the message "Can't convert file."  Does anyone 
>know what EXE2BIN is looking for?

EXE2BIN wants an executable which lives entirely within a single segment.
Compilers, in general, don't produce such executables--aside from assemblers,
the only compilers (that I know of) which do are Microsoft's and Borland's
C compilers, and only in the "tiny" model.

As for the rest, it sounds as though you're trying to create a memory-
resident program which accesses the disk.  This is, as they say, highly
non-trivial, and it will almost certainly result in the destruction of
the data on your disk, unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing.  Has to
do with non-reentrancy of DOS and similar uglinesses.  It *can* be done,
of course--screen-capturing TSRs exist--but I've never seen source code
to do so.  Your best bet would be to check Simtel for a couple of PC 
Magazine utilities called XDIR and SNIPPER (both assembly language)--I
think the latter was posted here about a year ago, but I could be mistaken.
Neither does precisely what you want, but they both fool with the disk
while another application is active, which should give you some idea of
what you're getting into.

SNIPPER is in pd1:[msdos.screen]snippr22.zip; XDIR is in pd2:[msdos2.pcmag]
vol6n07.arc.

With regard to doing this in Modula-2...heh heh heh.

Greg