Reminds me of GO.COM (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;peetm.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=55" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;peetm.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=55</a>) That is&#x2F;was an example.<p><i>GO.COM contained no program bytes at all – it was entirely empty. However, because GO.COM was empty, but still a valid program file as far as CP&#x2F;M was concerned (it had a directory entry and file-name ending with .com), the CP&#x2F;M loader, the part of the OS whose job it is to pull programs off disk and slap them into the TPA, would still load it!<p>So, how does this help? Well, using the scenario above:<p>the user exited WordStar
the user ran DIR (or whatever else they needed) and at some future point would be ready to re-run Wordstar
the user now ‘loaded’ and ran GO.COM
the loader would load zero bytes of the GO.COM program off disk into the TPA – starting at address 0100h – and then jump to 0100h – to run the program it just loaded [GO.COM]!<p>result – it simply re-ran whatever was in the TPA when the user last exited to DOS – instantly&quot;</i><p>It also wasn&#x27;t unusual to try and recover data from memory after a program crashed by launching a small program that dumped memory to disk. 100% reliable? No, but it was the best one sometimes had.