VETUSWARE.COM

On Thursday September 8, 2022 Dooser said:

This is identical zip file as https://vetusware.com/download​/MS-DOS5.0%20x86%20original%20​untouched%205.0%20DE/?id=8133
which claims to be the original untouched German MS-DOS 5.0 version.
I obtained a copy of MS-DOS from another source. Sadly not my floppies which
have become unreadable after a mere few decades in a garage and ran diff
over the files in the images. Floppy 2 and 3 files are identical but there
is one single difference on floppy 1:
diff -urN /mnt/AUTOEXEC.BAT /mnt2/AUTOEXEC.BAT
--- /mnt/AUTOEXEC.BAT 1990-02-03 14:00:00.000000000 +0100
+++ /mnt2/AUTOEXEC.BAT 1995-03-01 21:57:12.000000000 +0100
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
@echo off
nlsfunc
keyb gr
-setup
+rem setup
So the call to setup has been removed from autoexec.bat. All MS-DOS
distribution media I've ever used were booting straight into the installer.
Also note the file modification date which for the modified vetusware
version is from 1995 while the other image is from 1991. This means the
vetusware ersion is not genuine. FYI, even MS-DOS 6.22 was release before
1995.
Yet the images of floppy 2 and 3 are not identical. So I went for the deep
die and compared the hexdumps of all three floopies from both sources. I
found that in addition
- the volume serial numbers differ between the two sources
- all file modification dates differ. On the vertusware version they are
from 1991, about one month before the release date of MS-DOS 5.0. On
the alternate source they are a good 14 months older, from 1990!
So these differences are pretty benign and I don't know what to make from
the differing file modification dates and volume serial numbers. But the
autoexec.bat modification clearly is not genuine. So the vetusware
version is not as squeeky virgin as claimed.