23 Feb
2012
23 Feb
'12
6:16 p.m.
On 22 Feb 2012 at 22:35, Eric Smith wrote:
I've used IDA Pro. I agree that IDA Pro makes it
simple to get a
reasonable disassembly, but then, a disassembly isn't at all the same
thing as "reverse-engineered source code" IMNSHO. A disassembly tells
you that 05ah is loaded into the B register, but it usually doesn't
tell you what the meaning of 05ah is, nor why it is desired to have it
in B.
No--but I asked about disassembly, not reverse-engineering. What I
like about IDA is that there are sufficient features to create a
source file that looks like you wrote it yourself--with narrative.
When you're done disassembling you also get a chart that shows how
the various routines interact.
Visual cues are largely in the hands of the guy behind the keyboard.
If you don't know, what, say, a SCSI CDB looks like, no disassembler
is going to help you figure that one out.
It does know about some PC-related I/O ports, interrupts and so
forth, which is useful for disassembling option ROMs. I haven't
looked into seeing if this can be done for other architecutres, such
as the Model II, but I would be mildly surprised if it wasn't
possible.
--Chuck