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Startup & C Runtime

The program's boot path and the statically-linked MSVC C runtime it pulls in. Notably, The game executable is a native Win32 PE — there is no Phar Lap DOS extender (that name refers to the PL\0\0 overlay-DLL format handled elsewhere). The one genuine startup element in this range is the PE entry _WinMainCRTStartup (0x4D9D00); the rest is CRT.

Provenance: Ghidra static analysis of the game executable with FA.SMS symbols applied; recorded in the symbol database and applied to the Ghidra project. Progress: reconstruction matrix. Markers follow spec-authoring.md: confirmed · inferred · unknown.

What's here

  • _WinMainCRTStartup (0x4D9D00): the PE entry point — CRT init (heap, locale, argv, atexit) then the jump to the game's _WinMain.
  • CRT public functions: ~180 FA.SMS-named MSVC runtime routines (memory, string, math, stdio, locale) plus 41 IAT import thunks to DDRAW / the serial-comms driver / matchmaking.
  • CRT internals: ~116 compiler-runtime helpers (EH funclets, locale init/teardown, __amsg_exit, FID-identified library internals) — waived as "CRT runtime helper"; they are boilerplate, named where FA.SMS provides a name and waived otherwise. Per the reconstruction DoD, startup carries the CRT with these waivers rather than pretending the runtime is game code.

Startup: WinMainCRTStartup runs CRT init, then hands off to the game WinMain.

Functions

Full record: db/symbols/startup.csv.

VA Symbol Role
0x4D9D00 _WinMainCRTStartup PE entry: CRT init → game _WinMain
0x4D715A _DirectDrawCreate@12 DDRAW import thunk
0x4D7220 _ser_rs232_getpacket@12 serial-comms driver import thunk

Open Questions

1. Import-thunk attribution

The 41 IAT import thunks are carried under startup; a later pass could reassign them to the subsystems that call them (DDRAW → renderer, serial → network, …) for purer attribution.

Decision: keep them under startup. Each thunk is a single shared IAT entry (one per imported symbol, called from many subsystems), and the owning module is already legible from the import DLL name, so per-caller reattribution would duplicate entries across files and churn the DB for no analytic gain. The IAT/CRT-bootstrap grouping stays.

Status: resolved — re-static (kept in startup by decision).

  • game-loop.md — the _WinMain → FlyingLoop sequence startup hands off to.
  • architecture.md — the runtime environment and overlay-DLL system.
  • network.md — the serial-comms driver the thunks reach.