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Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso
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WHATSNEW.110
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1990-03-15
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Several new features have been added to PKZIP/PKUNZIP/PKSFX
version 1.1. Read the file ADDENDUM.DOC for a complete
description of these changes and enhancements. Highlights
of PKZIP/PKUNZIP/PKSFX etc. version 1.1 include:
- PKZIP 1.1 Imploding is up to 5X faster, particularly on large
spreadsheet and database type files where PKZIP 1.02 would run
relatively slowly. Most 'typical' types of files should
implode 5% to 25% faster. In addition, compression has been
improved over version 1.02 as well.
- Authenticity Verification.
- A 2,934 byte "mini" PKSFX self-extracting module.
- ZIP2EXE no longer requires the external file PKSFX.PRG.
- The ability to save & restore volume labels.
- Defensive use of the 32 bit accumulator EAX on 80386 or 80486
computers. In many instances, such as when using MultiSoft's
PC-KWIK cache or Novell non-dedicated NetWare software, if you
needed to set the PKNO386 environment variable with
PKZIP/PKUNZIP version 1.02, you probably don't need to set this
anymore with PKZIP/PKUNZIP version 1.1.
There appear to be many programs that use exTENded memory
and/or '80286 protected mode' that have absolutely no regard to
saving or restoring the EAX register when switching to and from
protected mode on an 80386 or 80486 CPU. There were no bugs in
PKZIP/PKUNZIP 1.02 regarding usage of the 80386 instructions or
registers. However, PKZIP/PKUNZIP 1.02 did not expect that the
EAX register would be wantonly corrupted from one instruction
to the next. PKZIP/PKUNZIP 1.1 do expect that other programs
may randomly destroy the EAX register, and defends against
this. PKZIP/PKUNZIP 1.1 treat all references to EAX as a
critical section, briefly disallowing programs from
interrupting PKZIP/PKUNZIP when the EAX register is used.
If it sounds ludicrous that a program would need to protect
access to a CPU register like this, particularly the
accumulator, that's because it is! Considering that 80386
computers have commonly been available for over two years now,
it is unfortunate that many '80286 specific' programs don't
have any consideration that they could be running on an 80386
or 80486 CPU. It takes approximately 30 bytes of code for a
program to determine if it is running on an 80286 CPU versus an
80386/80486 CPU, and two instructions (namely PUSH EAX and POP
EAX) to save and restore the EAX register. Any program that
uses exTENded memory or 80286 protected mode has little excuse
not to save and restore EAX when running on an 80386 or 80486
CPU, especially if they are going to interrupt the currently
executing program! Programs that are negligent of this will
only cause additional problems in the future as more software
is developed to take advantage of the 80386 and 80486
instruction sets and 32-bit registers.