To be clear, I think the previous suggestions are most likely. I just think the bad dump scenario shouldn't be overlooked, as it's possible for e.g. badly written DOS dumping drivers from 1997 to copy random chunks of memory to the output.
tepples wrote:
One thing that I think could help is a CDL from a complete playthrough.
I was curious and did end up doing this. It's probably RAM contents. Norton probably runs as a TSR and it got swept up in the dump.
It looks like it got two separate pieces of Norton. One chunk is this "NDOS" utility which the Internet says is a Symantec-licensed fork of 4DOS. It's a tool for a fancier command line. The other is Norton Cache, a disk accelerator.
There's actually more Norton in the first 32KB and it gets cut off exactly at the 0x8000 mark. There's a lot of empty space and only ~4KB of code. Most of the time the game doesn't read data anywhere near Norton, but 0x7C80 it reads a stray byte dangerously close to the text "SET UNINSTALL SAVE DUMP".
Code:
Omit option EXP or upgrade your Expanded$s01Memory Manager..Norton Cache canno
The data could have gotten there from a graphics utility, maybe even one Obernolte wrote himself. Maybe it saved in ROM-friendly format by just dumping a whole 16KB/32KB chunk of RAM to disk.
Definitely doesn't look like a bad dump though since the game code reads close to it at one point, in the same bank. You guys were right
