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Added a SourceGen tutorial with lots of screen shots. Uses "responsive web design" so it works well on mobile devices. This version is using jQuery load() calls to pull in pieces, but that causes a lot of blink when loading because the loads are asynchronous and may not complete until after the initial page render has finished. Tutorial prev/next links not yet working.
162 lines
6.0 KiB
HTML
162 lines
6.0 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
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<html lang="en">
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<head>
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<meta charset="utf-8"/>
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<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"/>
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<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.6.0/jquery.min.js"
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integrity="sha384-vtXRMe3mGCbOeY7l30aIg8H9p3GdeSe4IFlP6G8JMa7o7lXvnz3GFKzPxzJdPfGK" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css"/>
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="/main.css"/>
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<title>About Disassembly - SourceGen Tutorial</title>
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</head>
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<body>
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<div id="masthead">
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<!-- START: /masthead-incl.html -->
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<script>$("#masthead").load("/masthead-incl.html");</script>
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<!-- END: /masthead-incl.html -->
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</div>
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<div id="topnav">
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<!-- START: /topnav-incl.html active:#topnav-sgtutorial -->
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<script>
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// Load global topnav content, and mark current page active.
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$("#topnav").load("/topnav-incl.html", function() {
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$("#topnav-sgtutorial").addClass("active");
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});
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</script>
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<!-- END: /topnav-incl.html -->
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</div>
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<div id="sidenav">
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<!-- START: /sidenav-incl.html active:#sidenav-about-disasm -->
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<script>
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// Load local sidenav content, and mark current page active.
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$("#sidenav").load("sidenav-incl.html", function() {
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$("#sidenav-about-disasm").addClass("active");
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});
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</script>
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<!-- END: /sidenav-incl.html -->
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</div>
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<div id="main">
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<h2>About Disassembly</h2>
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<div class="grid-container">
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<div class="grid-item-text">
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<p>Well-written assembly-language source code has meaningful
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comments and labels, so that humans can read and understand it.
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For example:</p>
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<pre>
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.org $2000
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sec ;set carry
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ror A ;shift into high bit
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bmi CopyData ;branch always
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.asciiz "first string"
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.asciiz "another string"
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.asciiz "string the third"
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.asciiz "last string"
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CopyData lda #<addrs ;get pointer into
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sta ptr ; address table
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lda #>addrs
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sta ptr+1
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</pre>
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<p>Computers operate at a much lower level, so a piece of software
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called an <i>assembler</i> is used to convert the source code to
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object code that the CPU can execute.
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Object code looks more like this:</p>
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<pre>
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38 6a 30 39 66 69 72 73 74 20 73 74 72 69 6e 67
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00 61 6e 6f 74 68 65 72 20 73 74 72 69 6e 67 00
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73 74 72 69 6e 67 20 74 68 65 20 74 68 69 72 64
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00 6c 61 73 74 20 73 74 72 69 6e 67 00 a9 63 85
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02 a9 20 85 03
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</pre>
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<p>This arrangement works perfectly well until somebody needs to
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modify the software and nobody can find the original sources.
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<i>Disassembly</i> is the act of taking a raw hex
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dump and converting it to source code.</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="grid-container">
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<div class="grid-item-image">
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<img src="images/t0-bad-disasm.png" alt="t0-bad-disasm"/>
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</div>
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<div class="grid-item-text">
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<p>Disassembling a blob of data can be tricky. A simple
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disassembler can format instructions, but can't generally tell
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the difference between instructions and data. Many 6502 programs
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intermix code and data freely, so simply dumping everything as
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an instruction stream can result in sections with nonsensical output.</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="grid-container">
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<div class="grid-item-text">
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<p>One way to separate code from data is to try to execute all
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possible data paths. There are a number of reasons why it's difficult
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or impossible to do this perfectly, but you can get pretty good
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results by identifying execution entry points and just walking through
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the code. When a conditional branch is encountered, both paths are
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traversed. When all code has been traced, every byte that hasn't
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been visited is either
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data used by the program, or dead space not used by anything.</p>
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<p>The process can be improved by keeping track of the flags in the
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6502 status register. For example, in the code fragment shown
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earlier, <code>BMI</code> conditional branch instruction is used.
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A simple tracing algorithm would both follow the branch and fall
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through to the following instruction. However, the code that precedes
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the <code>BMI</code> ensures that the branch is always taken, so a
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clever disassembler would only trace that path.</p>
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<p>(The situation is worse on the 65816, because the length of
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certain instructions is determined by the values of the processor
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status flags.)</p>
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<p>Once the instructions and data are separated and formatted
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nicely, it's still up to a human to figure out what it all means.
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Comments and meaningful labels are needed to make sense of it.
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These should be added to the disassembly listing.</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="grid-container">
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<div class="grid-item-image">
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<img src="images/t0-sourcegen.png" alt="t0-sourcegen"/>
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</div>
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<div class="grid-item-text">
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<p>SourceGen performs the instruction tracing, and makes it easy
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to format operands and add labels and comments.
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When the disassembled code is ready, SourceGen can generate source code
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for a variety of modern cross-assemblers, and produce HTML listings
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with embedded graphic visualizations.</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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</div> <!-- grid-container -->
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<div id="prevnext">
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<a href="#" class="btn-previous">« Previous</a>
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<a href="#" class="btn-next">Next »</a>
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</div>
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</div>
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</body>
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</html>
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