Old MS-DOS & WIN Software

[Scott Stevens]

On Fri, 2 Dec 2005 15:47:11 -0800 (PST)
Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:

> > > > LIB and LINK were packaged with DOS,
> > > was originally included with PC-DOS, but stopped being
> > > included (around 5.0?)
> > > also EXE2BIN.EXE
> On Fri, 2 Dec 2005, Scott Stevens wrote:
> > And of course, always debug.  People used to distribute small
> > binaries as debug scripts ('pipe this textfile into debug and
> > save')
> 
> DEBUG (the most useful program to ever come from Microsoft) is
> STILL included in Windoze, even XP.
> 
> BTW, debug scripts can easily INCLUDE the save, and even the
> exit from debug.

One of my few contacts with the 'dark underworld' of virus writers
was that years ago I bought a commercially pressed CDROM called
'Forbidden Subjects' which contains a lot of the taboo content off
the old Internet.  In the 'virus' section are some archives of
Virus writer's newsletters.  One of the things I noticed is that a
lot of the classic old viruses were distributed as debug scripts. 
I was very unimpressed.  Most of the 'technical' articles
consisted of instructions how to create the binaries out of the
debug scripts.  Almost nothing about Assembly and no assembly
language source code.  It became apparent to me that almost the
entire 'virus' underworld was composed of what now get called
'script kiddies.'