MD5 for DOS

MD5 may have fundamental collision flaws, but it's still pretty good, especially if you're smart and eschew cryptographic applications of it and settle for more pedestrian situations like checksumming a file download.

In DOS, this is an uncommon request, apparently.

You heard me. DOS.

The other day I heard a VP talking about how antiquated a certain ticketing software network was. "It was running on DOS," she said. This is the same woman who can't reboot her own laptop without professional assistance.

DOS, however, has some very useful applications, even today. When was the last time your DOS prompt crashed on you? Yeah. I've never had it happen, either. (Programs may crash, but the OS itself never budged.)

So I tried the universal MD5 application that most people (people who would have this sort of thing) have on their PCs, the MD5 command line utility from fourmilab.ch.

"This program cannot be run in DOS mode."

So a little more searching found another version which is DOS-friendly. Look for "for Intel systems running DOS or Microsoft Windows". It works in DOS. And for a time, it was good.