DOSGuy: Confirmation of reported 't' 'z' at offset 28, observation that 'T' 'Z' is always present at offset 40, and possible internal build number separate from reported version number

2025-12-18T02:45:13Z

Confirmation of reported 't' 'z' at offset 28, observation that 'T' 'Z' is always present at offset 40, and possible internal build number separate from reported version number

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==Further header details==

I Tinyprog'd some executables using all known versions. Indeed, there's always "tz" at offset 28 followed by hexadecimal C1 in the "6/8/90" versions and C3 in versions 3.0 through 3.9. Capitalized "TZ" is also present at offset 40 in all versions.

I was curious about how the two "6/8/90" versions differ. The timestamp on TINYPROG.EXE is 1990-06-16 in TINYPROG.ARJ and 1990-06-20 in la022.zip. The two executables are different and produce different output files from the same input file. Comparing each version in a hex editor, I noticed that TINYPROG.EXE always has a 5-digit string at offset 81, as follows:

{| class=wikitable
|Version "6/8/90" - variant 1 || 00003
|-
|Version "6/8/90" - variant 2 || 00006
|-
|v3.0 || 00008
|-
|v3.3 || 00010
|-
|v3.5 || 00012
|-
|v3.6 || 00013
|-
|v3.8 || 00015
|-
|v3.9 || 00018
|}

Since they're sequential, it may represent an internal build number. Based on this, I would say that "variant 2" is not just a variant, but an update. There was probably a TINYPROG.EXE that was created on 1990-06-08 that had '00000' or '00001' at offset 81, and "variant 1" and "variant 2" were compiled on 6/12 and 6/16, respectively, despite the program still displaying "6/8/90".

[[User:DOSGuy|DOSGuy]] ([[User talk:DOSGuy|talk]]) 02:45, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

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DOSGuy: Confirmation of reported 't' 'z' at offset 28, observation that 'T' 'Z' is always present at offset 40, and possible internal build number separate from reported version number