Doing disassembly is about a process of refining. Some expect the disassembler to figure
out where the gobs of data bytes are. Most such disassembler do a poor job on one or
another program. The ones that actually work best are those that allow you ( a human ) to
look at the result and allow you to see list of suspected pointers. Also, those that high
light sections of code that don't make much sense. These features allow one to
feedback to the assembler meaning full labels for what the code does.
Although, one might think this type of disassembler is more complicated, it is often the
simpler ones that are the easiest to use.
I recommend that you write your own disassembler. The 8085 has a simple code. Make it so
you can post process notes made into the early listings and have them copied to the new
listing. It need to be able to start and stop disassembling and putting in fields of data
bytes. It is always useful to be able to define these data bytes in some regular format,
such as ASCII strings, address tables or possible offsets. The ability to carry forward
such information makes the process of dissecting a program so much easier.
If it is a disassembler that you wrote, you can add features that may be specific to the
code you are disassembling. An example of this is one I recently wrote to understand Forth
code. I'm looking at a Forth written for the 6502 but turnkeyed for a specific purpose
that is no longer useful. It had its complete dictionary intact that I'm making a new
boot section to allow me to access the interpreter and compiler.
One can optimize C code as well. It tends to have regular groups of instructions as well.
You as a human with a brain can do better at understanding things than any program.
Dwight
________________________________
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Bill Gunshannon via
cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2018 6:07:21 AM
To: cctalk at
classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: 8085 Dissasembly?
On 04/17/2018 08:04 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote:
From: Eric
Smith
But then, some of us might be masochists.
I think pretty much by definition if you're into vintage computers, you have
to be a masochist... :-)
Many of us think that the advent of the x86 architecture is what led to
masochism.
bill