• Libra00@lemmy.ml
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      21 hours ago

      No, this was via debug, a command that’s been included in MS-DOS since like version 2.0 (before there even was a Windows, much less full-OS windows like Win95/NT/etc rather than 3.0/3.1 that were just fancy launchers that sat on top of DOS.) It can let you view and alter the contents of memory at a particular address, etc. We also used it to wipe hard drives by forcibly writing 0s to every block on the drive.

      • zod000@lemmy.ml
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        20 hours ago

        You could do stuff like that with the older DOS versions of Norton Utilities. I used to do fun stuff like set my friend’s files as the drive label. He thought I was basically a wizard.

        • Libra00@lemmy.ml
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          14 hours ago

          Yup, or any hex editor that could target memory addresses (some of them were limited to run on a certain file or whatever.) But yeah I used to do similar when I was a kid, I would go into my game files (all DOS games back then of course) and change text strings you could find in there with a hex editor. I’d just change goofy stuff like ‘Copyright’ to ‘Copyleft’, ‘The bandit strikes the princess!’ to ‘The dude slaps a ho’, etc. It was endlessly amusing when I was that age. :)