Corncob versions and installation media

The supplied files contain eight distinct main-program combinations, covering the early shareware releases, two Personal Companion retail builds of the normal game, and Other Worlds Campaign. Your old installation is the 3.42 shareware game with a different documentation/distribution package and accumulated play state.

The “Deluxe” name has been used inconsistently. The retained Personal Companion installers actually call the normal Earth game Corncob Deluxe. The downloaded ZIP labelled Deluxe instead contains Other Worlds Campaign, identical to the explicitly named expansion download except for its distributor description.

Complete SHA-256 inventory and pairwise comparisons · Extraction provenance.

Installed versions

Version numbers below come from strings inside each MOAG.EXE, rather than archive filenames. File counts include documentation, saved state and distributor extras where present. They are not mission counts.

Matching lengths or version numbers alone do not establish byte equality. The machine-readable inventory records hashes of every executable and resource. Of these eight pairs, seven distinct 3.EXE binaries occur: retail 3.42 shares the shareware 3.42 flight executable, but has its own menu executable.

What “Deluxe” means in this collection

There is direct contemporary evidence for a commercial edition: the 2.00 shareware menu help explicitly describes Corncob Deluxe as a non-shareware version costing $15. It advertises more theatres and over 100 missions, a mission builder, sound editor, in-flight theatre analysis and score reporting, and expanded documentation. Thus “Deluxe” was not simply part of every release's name.

The retained products do not form a clean one-name/one-content mapping:

• Normal-game retail Deluxe, 3.40: the 360 KB image contains a Personal Companion installer and CNCOBSFX.EXE. Its payload has four normal-game theatre files: MORNING.CCT, WASTELND.CCT, DUSK.CCT and WHTSANDS.CCT. It has distinct executables, a small CCSMALL.BNK music bank and one ROL piece, rather than the larger bank and three ROL pieces supplied in the later shareware packages. The registration-help section is empty. Its manual still carries an Other Worlds order form.
• Normal-game retail Deluxe, 3.42: both new 720 KB images contain the same GO.EXE and CORNCOB.DNK. The installer itself identifies the product as Corncob Deluxe. Its 73-file installation has the exact same 3.EXE and all four theatre files as the 3.42 shareware ZIP. Sixty-eight files are identical; five differ: MOAG.EXE, MOAG.INF, CORNCOB.DOC, ORDER.FRM and CORNCOB.BAT. It omits six shareware/distributor extras. These comparisons establish common campaign data and flight code; they do not establish that every feature is enabled identically by the different menu programs.
• The ZIP called Corncob Deluxe: its own manual and menu program identify Other Worlds Campaign. All 108 files other than FILE_ID.DIZ are byte-identical to the explicitly named Other Worlds ZIP. This download provides no separate normal-game Deluxe edition.
• Historical documentation also overlaps the names: the 3.40 shareware manual has a heading for the Other Worlds Campaign order form, followed by a line pricing “Corncob Deluxe”. That inconsistent terminology predates these modern archive labels.

The evidence establishes separate normal-game retail builds and the expansion. It does not establish that the retained retail disks contain every feature promised by the earlier Deluxe advertisement, or a complete historical sequence of product renamings.

Original archives and media

The original top-level archives and disk images were deleted after verified extraction at your request. Their historical filenames appear below; hashes, ZIP member inventories and the IMD sector comparison remain in the source-media record, with the cleanup record listing every removal. Each unique download was extracted separately; the exact duplicate corncob.ZIP reused the 3.42 extraction. The ZIP's enclosing corncob-deluxe/ directory was removed when creating its installation directory; member names and hashes are retained in the manifest.

The IMD has 80 tracks, 720 sectors and ordinary readable sector records throughout: 703 raw sectors and 17 repeated-byte compressed sectors. Reconstructing it in cylinder/head/sector order yields exactly the supplied 368,640-byte IMG. Its header records an Applesauce conversion on 26 July 2025; that is not the game's release date.

Filesystem dates are evidence about individual copies. For example, the first disk is labelled 1992, but its GO.CFG is dated March 1993; the two DNK images carry May/June 1993 payload/installer dates. Modern archive labels and conversion timestamps should not be treated as definitive release dates.

Your existing installation

installs/corncob has 90 files. Its game executables match the fresh 3.42 shareware download, and its normal-game theatre definitions match too.

It also retains two byte-identical copies of cc3d342.zip, one at its root and one under full/. These ZIPs differ from the newly supplied 3.42 ZIP, but all their matching game code/resources are identical. Of their 79 members, 70 match the new distribution exactly, eight shared filenames have different documentation/distributor text or batch contents, and the old package has OVERSEAS.DOC where the newer one has CC3D1.COM.

Against its own nested distribution, all 65 remaining common logical files are byte-identical, including its documentation. The fourteen distribution .JPG files have been replaced by generated .VGA files. The installation also contains pilot records, three saved .THT theatres, configuration, 3.CMD, generated TOWERS.INF and a Windows PIF. The existing readme explains first-run graphics decompression; the inventory treats generated VGA files as different files rather than claiming a decoded image comparison that has not been performed.

The full/ directory's name therefore does not establish that this is the commercial or Other Worlds edition: its ZIP is a duplicate of the retained shareware distribution.

Differences worth retaining

• 1.20: preserves early documentation, demos and a broader set of .DEF files than the later shareware releases. Presence on disk does not establish that every theatre was accessible without registration.
• 2.00 installer versus played 2.00 floppy: 55 logical files match. 3.EXE, MOAG.INF and README.TXT differ. The floppy's flight executable is six bytes longer but has many differences, including changed address operands; it is not just an identical executable with six bytes appended. The menu executable is identical. Retain both pending code analysis. Its readme supplies an explicit 1.20 → 1.21 → 2.00 history, describing the removal of protection, new title/landing screens and the addition of Tundra and Wasteland.
• Retail versus shareware 3.40: 58 files match. Nine shared filenames differ, including both main programs, the title program, 3D6.IMG, two theatre descriptions, help, manual and launch batch. Music packaging also differs. This is a distinct variant, despite both menus carrying 3.40.
• Shareware 3.40 versus 3.42: 66 logical files match. Changes include both main programs, the JPEG conversion helper, MORNING.CCT, menu help and distribution text. This is a real update, not just a relabelled ZIP.
• Retail versus shareware 3.42: common flight code and theatre data, distinct menu/help/documentation. The fresh retail installation is a useful clean reference alongside the shareware and expansion copies.
• Other Worlds 3.42: distinct flight and menu programs, different music bank and three different ROL pieces, 16 .DEF files, an explicit mission-builder manual and TU.EXE. The sixteen definitions include examples and older theatres; this count is not a count of expansion planets or a verified list of playable campaigns. The package is standalone on disk; it does not need files copied from the base-game install to complete extraction.

Extraction and validation

The ordinary ZIP members were read with Python's ZIP reader, preserving each member's timestamp and checking CRCs. All sources and output files have SHA-256 records. The 3.42 exact duplicate ZIP was not unpacked twice.

The two LHA self-extractors were unpacked without executing their DOS stubs: unar handled 2.00's LH1 data after skipping its 1,295-byte stub; 7-Zip handled 3.40's LH5 archive at offset 1,636. The comparison script independently verifies all 126 unpacked members' sizes and CRC-16 values against the original LHA headers. Neither 7-Zip nor libarchive supports this older LH1 stream here; unar does.

The three new 7z-contained images were decompressed to RAM-only descriptors and their filesystems extracted with mcopy; no extra raw IMG copies were stored. The existing raw IMG was also extracted with mcopy. Original FAT file timestamps were preserved.

The proprietary CORNCOB.DNK was unpacked by its original GO.EXE inside DOSBox 0.74-3, using copies of the media and a private temporary C: drive. The installer reported success, and its 73 files were copied to installs/deluxe_dnk before starting the game. A private Xvfb display and dummy audio prevented it from disturbing the desktop. The second DNK was not installed again because its payload and installer bytes are identical. Product-name capture · Successful installation capture.

Run python3 tools/inventory_versions.py to refresh analysis/versions.json. It reads the extracted installations, rechecks the two nested distribution ZIPs in your original install and all 126 extracted LHA members, and records every pairwise file comparison. Removed source archives are represented by their historical inventories; the IMD sector result is explicitly marked as a prior verification, rather than a new check of absent images. First-run directory moves into def/, img/ and vga/ are normalised for those comparisons; the original paths remain in each file record. Configuration and saved files are included explicitly, not silently discarded.