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AGI Development Tools / Re: Original AGI Interpreter
« on: July 05, 2024, 12:50:07 PM »I wanted to highlight again the .LNK files, both the BILOAD.LNK and SIERRA.LNK files. It is relevant to AP86 because of the existence of AP86.LNK in a DOS directory table entry in the slack space of one of the disks.
AP86.LNK 21 07-Sept-1986 17:02:58 [cluster=342]
Hmmm, didn't expect it to be so small though. Whatever these .LNK files are, they're always quite small.
I am not sure if this is true of the MS DOS LINK tool, but certainly for the PLINK86 tool that was used as the linker for the AGI executable and overlays, the .LNK file extension is the default extension for the linker "command" file. I think that Sierra would have used PLINK86 for some things, like AGI where the PLINK overlay system was used, but also LINK for other tools. LINK did also support a command input file but I'm not sure if .LNK was also the default file extension for that. Regardless, it seems very likely that these .LNK files were to instruct the linker, and therefore AP86.LNK would have been for defining how to link AP86.EXE. With a size of 21 bytes, it wouldn't have said much at all, perhaps only enough to specify the name of the input and output files. I am assuming it was a simple one module program, so maybe there was an AP86.OBJ that was linked into AP86.EXE.