From: John Tserkezis 
Reply-To: Fidonet AVtech Echo 

Paul Quinn wrote:

>  JT> If it starts with MZ, (the initials of the guy who laid out the
>  JT> format of EXE files if I recall) then it's an EXE, otherwise
>  JT> it's a plain machine language COM.

> "MZ" stands for Mark Zbikowksi who was the principal architect of DOS.

  Ah yes, right you are.   A further google search reveals it's actually 
spelled "Zbikowski", but did not appear to be miss-spelled
"smith" as often as 
you would think.

  For those who are interested, there is further interesting reading via 
google, including some valid (COM) code that just happens to start with MZ (DEC 
BP and POP DX), which crashes if you attempt to run it.  Apon changing the 
first few bytes with NOPs, it works.

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Linux Registered User # 302622                         http://counter.li.org>
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