EasyPatch V1.1

                (C)1992 by Adrian Studer (Chicken/ECR)
        Home of EPatch: The Lycaeum ++41 41-762-989  v32b/v42b

                          Registered to you!


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WHAT IS EPATCH GOOD FOR ?

Isn't it ugly ?
You've made a silly tool/game/demo and it fills a directory with tons
of unpacked RAW-Files. Wasting a lot of rare diskspace, easy to rip
for every lamer, and worst: it looks unprofessional.

Up to now, there were three solutions:
a) you created an overlay.
   But what's an overlay, how to create it, how to load it ?
   It's mostly not compressable with a normal EXE-packer like
   PKLite or LZEXE.
b) you converted the data-files into ASCII (db ....).
   But the include-files need a lot of diskspace, include is quite
   slow, and it's not possible to include more than 64K at once.
c) you converted the data-files into OBJ.
   But compiler/linker put it where they want, with more than 64K
   only God, Microsoft and Borland know, how to set up the
   segments to get a correct linking!

(You're right, I'm just too stupid for (the usual?) solution c... )

EPatch is completly different:
  * You know/say where the datas are
  * Include binary files without any converting
  * Don't care about the 64K boundary anymore
  * It's faster than light


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AND NOW THE DOCS !

Imagine, you want to show everyone out there your selfdrawn picture
(bleech)! It's converted into a rawfile (or do you want to code a
GIF-decoder?), the first 768 bytes are colours, the next 64000 bytes
are bitmap. This file we call TEST.PIC.

First the Source of TEST.ASM:

.MODEL SMALL

.STACK 100h

.DATA
Colors  db "MyPiccy"            ;the label epatch is looking for
        db 768 - 7 dup (0)      ;"-7" is the lenght of the label
Bitmap  db 64000   dup (0)

VidMode db 0

.CODE
START:  mov  dx,@DATA           ;just a little silly example
	mov  ds,dx

        mov  ah,0fh             ;save Video-Mode
        int  10h
        mov  VidMode,al

        mov  ax,0013h           ;set video-mode = 13h
        int  10h                ;320x200 256 colors

        mov  ax,1012h           ;turn on colors
        mov  bx,00h
	mov  cx,100h
	mov  dx,ds
	mov  es,dx
        mov  dx,OFFSET Colors
        int  10h

        mov  si,OFFSET Bitmap   ;copy bitmap to screen
	mov  di,00h
        mov  dx,0A000h
        mov  es,dx
	mov  cx,64000
        rep  movsb

        mov  ah,08h             ;wait for a key
        int  21h

        mov  ah,00h             ;restore video-mode
        mov  al,VidMode
        int  10h

        mov  ax,4c00h           ;return to DOS
        int  21h

END START

You have to compile and link it with TASM/TLINK as usual.
And now the trick: EPATCH TEST.EXE TEST.PIC MyPiccy
This will place the TEST.PIC in TEST.EXE, starting at the label
"MyPiccy". As label you should take a name, you're sure that it's
not used somewhere else in your program... it isn't that usefull
when the picture is linked into a textscreen! The only thing to
take care of is, that the label is case-sensitif.


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HOW TO INCLUDE MORE THAN 64 KILOBYTES ?

To include more than the magic 64K, you simply have to create some
segments that are linked in a row. 

e.g.: 
.FARDATA Sound1
MyMuzax	db "ForSound"
	db 0FFF0h dup (0)
.FARDATA Sound2
	db 0FFF0h dup (0)
...

Compiling, linking and patching keeps the same, the only thing to
check out is, that your linker sorts segments of the same type by
name.

	
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REVISION HISTORY

05/92	first Beta-Release of EPatch
06/92   Final-Release V1.0
07/92   Version 1.1
        fixed a bug that destroyed the destination-file when the
        lenght of data-file is a multiple of 16K (cool thing eh?!?).

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CONTACT THE AUTHOR

You won't believe it, but I've a question to EPatch:
   How to use EPatch in languages like Turbo Pascal or Basic?
   
If you've written a little doc 'bout this question, or if you got an
idea for some switches, or some donations for a poor coder (dreamin'?),
then write to:

		Adrian Studer
		Vormhle
	     CH-6170 Schpfheim
		Switzerland

or call The Lycaeum ++41 41-762-989 and write a message to Chicken
or via InterNet chicken@ezinfo.vmsmail.ethz.ch