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From: dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal,comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: PKLITE 1.03 warning
Message-ID: <1991Jan4.231850.24022@maytag.waterloo.edu>
Date: 4 Jan 91 23:18:50 GMT
Sender: daemon@maytag.waterloo.edu (Admin)
Organization: University of Waterloo
Lines: 22


WARNING:

Don't use PKLITE 1.03 on the files TPCX.EXE or TD286.EXE that come with 
the professional version of Borland's TP 6.0.  (TD286 probably also comes with 
TC or TC++ professional, and there might be a 286 version of the compiler there
too; I'd suspect the same problems with it.)

The problem is that these two programs use a DOS extender called OS/286 which
apparently has a non-standard .EXE format.  PKLITE will compress the files,
and will claim to uncompress them, but they won't run in either format.
Some 8 or 9 bytes of the .EXE file get zeroed in the compress/uncompress cycle.
You'll have to restore new copies from a backup or the original disk.

For those unfamiliar with it:  PKLITE is a program like LZEXE.  It compresses
executable files, and uncompresses them at load time.  One of its biggest
selling points for me was that it is supposed to be reversible; if the
compressed version doesn't work, just uncompress and don't worry about it.
Looks like you can't trust this feature.

Duncan Murdoch
dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu