Exec error is a problem of Portfolio ROM. Most typically it occurs on version 1.052 and 1.072. The versions 1.130 and 1.133 are a bit improved and have less bugs in ROM. The UPDATE.COM is a short software that will help a Portfolio user very much. It is necessary that Portfolio users with version bellow 1.130 run the UPDATE.COM. The program is available from my WWW page and should be installed in AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
Type VER command in DOS:
The v1.072 means that the Portfolio is ROM version 1.072
After some experiments some of the Portfolio users noticed that ";"
in AUTOEXEC.BAT evokes Exec Error on Portfolio. The solution is:
Some Portfolio make EXEC error when you run from the third and deeper subdirectory:
If one program makes the Exec error, often it leaves the RAM in a "corrupt"
state. If you receive EXEC Error, Memory full, Out of Memory or similar
message again, it is necessary to reboot (CTRL-ALT-DEL) - otherwise the
software may not run because of the mess in RAM.
Although this may be an exceptional case, there maybe some TSR software
that when executed on Portfolio may cause other software to evoke the Exec
Error. In such a case remove the TSR software.
This is a problem that is linked with software created by Turbo Pascal
v 5.00 and above. The EXE file has a header that contains information about
execution of the EXE file. There is also information about the length of
the EXE file. This was information about file length was meant as a protection
against PC viruses or any other similar corruption of the file - if the
virus attacked the EXE, the file was made longer by the virus code, but
the header was likely to remain original. When starting this virus attacked
EXE file, the system would check the total file length against the information
in the EXE header. When the length is not equal the file will not be run
and the virus will not be spread. That was the idea. The story is that
MS DOS on PC does not support this length check. But Portfolio DIP DOS
does support it! However because of the system in ROM and because of small
RAM (usually only 128K) there has never been any case of virus on Portfolio
and this length checking function of DIP DOS has no sense on Portfolio
- it only causes troubles with EXE files. To make the story more complicated,
the Turbo Pascal by Borland and a few other languages have a bug that does
not affect desktop PC but troubles Portfolio users. The Turbo Pascal writes
wrong value into the EXE header. This will cause that the file will evoke
Exec Error on Portfolio.
In 1990 there was a software (freeware) utility somewhere on CompuServe
that corrected the EXE Header problem. It was written by some PF user and
it solved the Exec error problem in a "clean - profi" way. I
was not able to locate this Exec-patch again. (If any of the old PF gurus
has this patch, please throw it into public again.)
There is an amateur solution that works. If the EXE file is made longer
then it will wok fine on Portfolio. The file can be extended by following
procedure:
(The autoexec is just an example file, you can use any ASCII file that
is about 200 bytes long)
There is one more source of Exec Error and that is with RUN files. The
problem is that the length of RUN file in the directory record cannot be
more than 64K. If you have this problem please contact me directly for
more details.
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