Farsi Windows 3.1 halts on Windows portion of Setup...

[scatman]

Could the image provided be corrupted?

[Battler]

We have this on several MSDN discs, all file comparisons match, and all copies have the same problem, so it's definitely not corruption.

[roytam1]

checkout sub_91C6 in GDI.EXE there is a subroutine for dongle I/O.

[Battler]

- roytam1: This confirms it's indeed dongle-protected. I'm going to take a look at this.

[roytam1]

for me I'd likee to bypress dongle codes and use it without dongle.

in GDI.EXE, DAVIDMSGDI3() calls sub_8EDA() which calls sub_8F21() which calls sub_91C6()

[roytam1]

hacked GDI.EXE a little bit just to bypass dongle operations


switching to Farsi UI


Current Drive Letter is broken?



EDIT: Seems to be common if no floppy drive is available in system

Farsi Font dialog:

[roytam1]

SETUP with patched GDI.EXE
















and it seems to have other places having dongle check.
EDIT: Seems both progman.exe and winfile.exe has dongle check.

[roytam1]

OK patched files uploaded here:
mega.nz/#!DY9jRIzK!m7TzhpOMldY3tz0PlfxCkbSkZdBex9BzmnlUS8rFlbY

[Battler]

Thanks for your patched files, they will do until I get around to emulating the dongle.

Now, I wonder how exactly it communicates to the dongle, that is, what does it send to what port, and what it expects to get back.

[roytam1]

Thanks for your patched files, they will do until I get around to emulating the dongle.

Now, I wonder how exactly it communicates to the dongle, that is, what does it send to what port, and what it expects to get back.

It seems to be a parallel port dongle(normally, but can be serial port dongle as well, or even ISA card "dongle") as it use x86 IN/OUT instructions.
FYI: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/321 ... 6-used-for

for "how it expect dongle's output", you may need studying the assembly codes (and the caller's codes)
unfortunately hex-rays seems unable to turn 16bit assembly into pseudo code.

[dfawcus]

BTW - What is that MiniDos program? Google gives too many false positives.

[roytam1]

BTW - What is that MiniDos program? Google gives too many false positives.

Thats my self-written VB3 program

[Battler]

What is the actual offset in GDI.EXE of sub_91C6()?

[roytam1]

What is the actual offset in GDI.EXE of sub_91C6()?

GDI.EXE absolute file offset 0xB3E6 is starting of sub_91C6().

[Battler]

I made 86Box log LPT1 reads and writes, this is the output from where Windows hangs: https://pastebin.com/EG1QvH6c . Seems it tries to send two sequences to the port, F8/FC/FC and E8/FC/FC, and expects to receive some data in return.