Why Castrol Honda Superbike crashes on (most) modern systems

72 pointsposted 15 hours ago
by shepmaster
(seri.tools)

17 Comments

vintagedave

3 hours ago

> Microsoft has only kept the documentation for the DX8 version of EnumDevices left online

This saddens me. Who knows how much valuable info has been lost. I recall back in the days of MSDN, we had docs back to early Windows, and it was a wonderful historical record. Today's Docs site seems to keep info only for a few versions.

bitwize

3 hours ago

Anybody who still has MSDN Library CDs from the 90s, archive them at archive.org NOW!

seritools

an hour ago

AFAIK they are all backed up. For the blogpost I used the DX5 SDK docs, DX7 SDK docs, and the MSDN Library from VS2005 (last version to include 9x information).

The VS2008 version purged all API information regarding pre-Windows 2000.

falcor84

3 hours ago

Another good reason to support independent internet archives

bayindirh

3 hours ago

Why share something which you can sell for exorbitant prices? /s

vintagedave

an hour ago

I was quite interested in the patch -- am I right in thinking the DirectX library only exports a single function and _everything_ else is through DX interfaces?

I expected to see significantly more code, pass-through to the original DLL.

seritools

40 minutes ago

> am I right in thinking the DirectX library only exports a single function and _everything_ else is through DX interfaces

Yup! That's why I didn't have to create a gazillion passthrough functions.

The original DLL in my modern Windows installation has these 8 exports:

    DirectInputCreateA
    DirectInputCreateEx
    DirectInputCreateW
    DllCanUnloadNow
    DllGetClassObject
    DllRegisterServer
    DllUnregisterServer
The game only calls DirectInputCreateA, and the rest happens via the COM object that that function creates.

xx_ns

an hour ago

The author linked to the repo and the code is at https://github.com/seritools/castrol-honda-dinput-fix/blob/m...

Seems pretty straightforward. They hook DirectInputCreateA() and pass their own device enumeration wrapper with the offending flag removed.

tialaramex

36 minutes ago

The flag DIDEVTYPE_JOYSTICK was added by this fix not removed.

The idea is, rather than handle up to 8 devices, otherwise UB and usually crash, handle up to 8 "joysticks" and disregard any beyond that.

xx_ns

31 minutes ago

Apologies, that's what I meant to say. I blame that on my lack of coffee today, my bad.

PaulKeeble

3 hours ago

Its interesting to see how bad assumptions that almost certainly held up at the time really don't any more and that leads to this bug being exposed. Modern machines have a lot more addressable devices and a failure to properly filter and using a vector ultimately leads to a bug that on the surface feels like since it works on Win98 must be caused by Windows but isn't.

xx_ns

2 hours ago

I appreciated the footnote on filesize optimization as someone who's constantly trying to compulsively generate the smallest binaries possible.

Interesting article, thank you.

purpleidea

2 hours ago

The cool part of this adventure is that the author was able to write this DLL patch purely in rust! Good testament of how far it has come. Can't wait to see more C code ported to either Golang or Rust!

Xylakant

an hour ago

I chuckled at the callout to Rust9x. Neat to see it pop up randomly.

seritools

an hour ago

Author here -- given that r9x is also my project it wasn't entirely random :^)

vintagedave

an hour ago

This is pretty amazing, and I'm surprised in a sense by how few workarounds you've had to implement. It makes me wonder what Windows would look like if we had Win2K or Win7 with today's system APIs (for high DPI, increased security etc.)

I know Windows has made great strides in security, but I deeply miss the old Windows and this really hits home about how _little_ has fundamentally changed, or rather, how much the continuance of these APIs means today's Windows could be like old Windows, if MS wanted.

I came across Windhawk a couple of days ago here on HN, a system to patch Windows to look and behave more old-style; wow.

ensocode

3 hours ago

Thanks for the flashback :)