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W98_Slip: genuine slipstreaming for windows 9x


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Diantz may be using an earlier version of the CAB compression spec. "21xx" is found throughout diantz, while makecab has "22xx" (hexadecimal values in file). The files are nearly identical. There's a small section of data within the exe that is approx 16bytes, which is different between the two files. This may be the algorithm used. I have no idea though, as I'm not a real hacker/programmer... :unsure:

My opinion is that it is just different compilation of the same source code.

Petr

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Excellent write-up on the details of the Windows 9x setup distro package :thumbup

FYI 1,802,240 (1.72M) is actually the capacity of an obscure floppy format that Micro$oft created, but it was found that some floppy drives could not read it, so it was abandoned. I have attempted to recreate this format, and my floppy drives can read and format it fine, but other drives may have problems with 84 tracks.

Volume XTDTOOLS created 04-07-2004 4:16p
Volume Serial Number is CF64-C47A

1,802,240 bytes total disk space
1,802,240 bytes available on disk

32,768 bytes in each allocation unit
55 total allocation units on disk
55 available allocation units on disk

The exact parameters are 84 tracks and 21 sectors/track, 32k cluster size, one root directory sector, two fat sectors.

It appears that most floppy disk drives are fine with it.

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Indeed, XP 'formatter' is a joke. All the formatting I do is with Fint13 from DOS.

A special driver is not needed to support >18 sectors/track, just set the floppy in BIOS as 2.88Mb.

1802240 is the formatted capacity, just like a "1.44Mb" floppy actually has 1457664 usable bytes but 1474560 actual bytes in sectors.

1802240 bytes = 3520 sectors of usable space

+ 512 bytes = 1 sector for root directory

+ 1024 bytes = 2 sector for 2 FATs

+ 2048 bytes = 4 reserved sectors

+ 512 bytes = 1 sector for superblock

= 1806336 bytes = 3528 sectors total

Thanks LLXX, do you also happen to know if it uses 1, 2 or 4 sector(s) cluster?

(the 1.68 DMF format differed from "normal" 1.68 as it had two sub-versions one DMF1024 with two sectors clusters and DMF2048 wit 4 sectors clusters)

jaclaz

I only tried to recreate this format, so I'm not sure of the original. I used 64 sectors/cluster.

Here is Diamond 1.00.0520 and doc: http://dump.stoleyour.net/uploads/07cdc9948f.zip

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Thanks for the link Petr

Today I have finally had time to get around to giving this a proper look and I have just completed an win9x install using modified cabs

For a test I replaced explorer.exe,comdlg32.dll and shell32.dll from Windows 95 into windows 98 cabs files Win98_27.cab,Win98_41.cab and Win98_45.cab. I then used a program called cabman2003 to place in the correct Cabinet Set Id and compressed them at LZX 21.

Googling cabman2003 gets me a number of pages in Chinese and Russian, which I can't read: can you point me to the home page of the software?

I could build the ability to slipstream the win95 explorer into w98_slip, but It's not high on my priority list because I no longer use the 95 shell myself. I used 98lite's "sleek" shell for years, but recently I've finally moved on to the "chubby" shell because now that I have a DVD burner, I'm occasionally dealing with multiple gigabytes of files, and the 95 explorer can't handle large directories well; between 2 and 3 gigabytes, it starts reporting the size of the selected folder or files incorrectly. Seeing the pie chart in the disk properties isn't important to me; seeing the actual size of the files I've selected is.

the cabs produced were somewhat larger and also smaller than the 1760kb of the other setup cabs. I then extracted COPY.INF, SETUPP.INF, PRECOPY.INF, MSINFO.INF, LAYOUT.INF,LAYOUT2.INF,LAYOUT3.INF from the cab files, I am not sure If all of these were necessary but I went and modified the necessary layout files and input the new files sizes of the 3 replaced files, not forgetting to modify LAYOUT.INF for the resultant change in the size of the other layout files.

If you're just replacing a file with another version of the same file, the only .inf files you need to worry about modifying, in my experience, are the layout* files. If you're adding a file, things get a more tricky: I think the only places you need to insert the new name are layout*, copy*, and the inf file whose filecopy section you want to add the new file into, but I could be wrong.

It does not seem to me that we need to worry about the 1760kb file size.SETUPP.INF was also modified to remove components. Setup completed after complaining about missing control.exe and a couple of other files which were spanned from previous and concurrent cabs. I hope to rectify this and start to add upated files to the cab set.

Agreed the 1760kb size is not important. Actually, come to think of it, w98_slip's use of .new cabinet instead of .set maxdisksize eliminates file spanning completely, which would then make it easier to undertake the kinds of experiments you're doing.

Edited by glaurung
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Sorry, LLXX, I have overlooked your previous reply, and have to correct it:

The abbreviation is DMF168.

No, the 1.68 DMF format is explained here:

http://www.winimage.com/wimushlp/wini1a1y.htm

There are actually three 1.68 formats, all have geometry 2x21x80 and thus have a total of 1,720,320 bytes:

1) "normal" has 1 sector (512 bytes) cluster and 1 sector for boot, 2x10 sectors for FAT and 14 sectors for dirs, which allows for max 224 files in root, usable size is 1,702,400

2) DMF 1.68 "1024" has 2 sectors (1024 bytes) cluster and 1 sector for boot, 2x5 sectors for FAT and 1 sectors for dirs, which allows for max 16 files in root, usable size is 1,714,176

2) DMF 1.68 "2048" has 4 sectors (2048 bytes) cluster and 1 sector for boot, 2x3 sectors for FAT and 1 sectors for dirs, which allows for max 16 files in root, usable size is 1,716,224

Then there is the 1.72 format:

geometry 2x21x82, total size 1,763,328 bytes, 1 sector (512 bytes) cluster and and 1 sector for boot, 2x10 sectors for FAT and 14 sectors for dirs, which allows for max 224 files in root, usable size is 1,745,408

I suppose we can call the format you mentioned a "1.76 DMF", just like:

1,474,560/1024/1000=1.44

1,720,320/1024/1000=1.68

1,763,328/1024/1000=1.72

we have:

1,806,336/1024/1000=1.76

I think this is the biggest format that does not use some "trick" like the 2m formats or the IBM XDF 1.84 format.

It appears that most floppy disk drives are fine with it.

Actually, strange as it might seem, the opposite of "normality" is true.

Going beyond the 80th or in some cases 81th track appears to be a major problem with "brand name" drives, whilst "no name" ones behave better.

However these formats do push the drive to (and beyond) design limits, so they are not dependable.

Moreover, due to the drop in price of floppies (the media I mean), they appear to be of lesser quality than they used to be.

I have used for a certain period the Naslite software that uses a 1.72 floppy and I was able to get about one working floppy out of three using new "brand name" media, whilst I had about 90% success with a few years old "recovered from gargage bin" used floppies.

jaclaz

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I played around with the diamond package some time ago. It seems to be heavily driven by setup-like files.

I know that i did a fair bit of modifications to the Windows 95B package, largely to remove the ISP packages and a few other things. There was plan to integrate M!nus (ie a pruned P!us 95) into the package, but it only got so far.

One of the files you have to pull out is SETUPP.INF, as well as LAYOUT.INF. It's a horrible mess, none the same.

More later when i find the bones of the project...

:yes:

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'M!nus'... good idea for a name :D

Indeed, the AOL etc. crap are useless and very much obsolete. In the standard 98se distro even if I uncheck 'online services' in custom install it still installs it and I have to manually delete afterwards. Also themes etc. are pure useless IMHO, you can get better skin/theme enhancements if you want.

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Noooooo!!!

Not my Themes! I like those old things. Install the one's in Plus!98 too. Then I just add others I like.

Then I wind up being boring and just using default. But I like the choices. Big hard drives. Don't mind some bloat.

I even sometimes use the old AfterDark Screensavers, but now on XP. I found a couple of sites that have installers updated for XP. I only haven't tried them on 98 yet because of the resources they probably use. Talk about old stuff though! I never used them in the past. I didn't even know about them.

BadDog! Flying Toasters! Star Trek! Heh, heh. The neatest time waister's.

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I even sometimes use the old AfterDark Screensavers, but now on XP. I found a couple of sites that have installers updated for XP. I only haven't tried them on 98 yet because of the resources they probably use. Talk about old stuff though! I never used them in the past. I didn't even know about them.

BadDog! Flying Toasters! Star Trek! Heh, heh. The neatest time waister's.

I own all versions of After Dark Screen Savers + Games ever sold for Windows 3.x/9x. Big fan, can you tell? ;)

Could you post [or email if not appropriate for this forum] the links to updated XP installers for AD?

Many thanks in advance.

Please click the blue E-mail link:

http://www.mdgx.com/form.htm

Thanks.

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There were 3 sites I got my info and downloads from. One of them had a hacking method that was later superceded by the

http://www.geocities.com/thypentacle/

website. He created a 3.2 version for all the Afterdark 3 screensavers and can be used on 9x or XP.

He also created a 4.1 version that also works on 9x and XP. The nice thing about it is he doesn't include the screensavers in 4.1 as the 3.0 screensavers originally included in AfterDark 4 do not run within version 4 when using Windows XP. You need to use 3.2 for those, so you install both versions and keep the 3 version screensavers in C:\AFTERDRK and the 4 versions in C:\After Dark.

The other main place for info and downloads is

http://www.andy.clark.dial.pipex.com/hobbi...n/screen_ad.htm

and between the 2 sites nearly all the screensavers can be downloaded. The andy clark site had moved from some tigarheli site and I needed to search around to find it again.

Most of the screensavers have XP adjusted versions within the packs from thypenticle. These all install without reinstalling old versions of the program so his packs are the best way to install them. Only the Disney pack (that's on the andyclark site) is weird in that it needs to be installed by its original installer, then you delete the entire AFTERDRK directory, end process on the After Dark tray application and install the whole 3.2 package again along with re running the 3.2XP update. Then just install the pre-zipped up disneyXP pack. After playing around with this, I discovered that's the best way. So I install the Disney Pack as the 1st pack of screensavers after installing AfterDark 3.2 and 4.1 then after I'm done fooling with reinstalling 3.2 I'm free to just unzip all the other packs to the appropriate folders.

Both sites have servers that severly limit downloading. I think it took me several days to get everything as after downloading a couple of things the servers cut off access to all downloads for a period.

Since you are good at this stuff it's probably easier for you to download just a couple of XP packs, examine what he did to the files and just do the same to your existing files. It'll probably be a lot less hastle for you as I had to download everything.

So, get the 3.2XP and 4.1 and a couple of packs and print out all the FAQ's and stuff and you'll be all set.

The older info about hacking the original AfterDark 4 was

http://www.uneasysilence.com/?p=4694

but this only runs the 4 screensavers and you wind up with all the useless non-working 3 versions that do work with 3.2XP.

Edit - Uh oh. I just examined the Andy Clark site. He just lists the older instructions for hacking 4.0. That's not the way to do it. ThyPentacle has the new 4.1 version. The old TigerHeli site that had the rest of the 4 packs and some great FAQ's is gone!

Edited by Eck
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MDGx,

Did you actually get my huge attachment? I'm asking because Outlook Express is still showing that it's sending the thing.

This is the 2nd attempt after the 1st one got somehow stopped by McAfee. It's 115MB. The blinking McAfee systray icon is still showing Items 1 Sent 0 and offers no other information.

For the 2nd attempt I went into McAfee and shut off outbound scanning. Task Manager is showing some network usage but I really have no idea if this is just the normal activity from being connected to the internet. There is no progress bar in Outlook Express running.

I'm about to go ahead and deleat (or attempt to) the message in the Outlook Express Outbound folder.

You'd think I'd have at least a progress bar if it was actually doing anything. I guess huge attachments are not what email is designed for?

You said you saved what you needed and I assume that means you've got what you need.

Edit - Well I managed to clear out and fix things. McAfee just needed a Windows restart to clear up the email systray icon. I had tried to send you all the files but you probably don't need the packs you already have anyway.

Edited by Eck
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