VOGONS


First post, by Peter Swinkels

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Curious about an old MS-DOS game (Another World) I tried viewing it using the MS-DOS editor (which came with Windows 95 and up) , but unfortunately it turns out to be compressed. There's a "DIET" label in the header and no other legible text. Unp.exe can't decompress it and the Diet utiliy I found appears to be unable to decompress self-extracting executables. Apparently there's a utility called CUP386 which allegedly can decompress self-extracting executables, but I can't figure out how to use it. Does anyone know of utiltites which can decompress Diet-compressed executables?

Supposedly diet -RA ... does the trick but I just get an error about there being no files or something to that effect.

My GitHub:
https://github.com/peterswinkels

Reply 2 of 7, by Peter Swinkels

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Hey BloodyCactus, thank you for your kind reply. 😀 That page looks interesting, I will certainly take a look soon.

Sorry for the late reply. 😀

My GitHub:
https://github.com/peterswinkels

Reply 3 of 7, by Peter Swinkels

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Your program outputs "Did not detect any known routines."

I am going to send you a dm. Okay?

My GitHub:
https://github.com/peterswinkels

Reply 4 of 7, by BloodyCactus

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Its got a custom scrambler on it, its not DIET, not one I've seen before. It messes with debug interrupt (0xCC) and single stepping interrupt between every descrambling opcode.

--/\-[ Stu : Bloody Cactus :: [ https://bloodycactus.com :: http://kråketær.com ]-/\--

Reply 5 of 7, by Peter Swinkels

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file.php?mode=view&id=220748

Then what is up with the "DIET" bit in the upper row?

My GitHub:
https://github.com/peterswinkels

Reply 6 of 7, by Stretch

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I had success decompressing a DIET exe with jummers/deark

The source code deark-1.7.0.tar.gz has a compiled Windows exe included in the x64 folder.

Win 11 - Intel i7-1360p - 32 GB - Intel Iris Xe - Cubilux 7.1 USB

Reply 7 of 7, by BloodyCactus

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Peter Swinkels wrote on Yesterday, 14:05:

Then what is up with the "DIET" bit in the upper row?

its a false lead. It might be packed with diet further down, but on the surface, it has another scrambler encrypting the exe with a bunch of anti debugging tricks in it.

--/\-[ Stu : Bloody Cactus :: [ https://bloodycactus.com :: http://kråketær.com ]-/\--