Date   : Sun, 03 Dec 2006 20:56:11 +0000
From   : thomasharte@... (Thomas Harte)
Subject: Favoured disassemblers?

> From:: "Jon Welch" <jon.welch@...>
> I personally use the one built into my DFS/ADFS Explorer programs.
> 
> Very useful to disassemble code in disc images.

I'm sure your disassembler is wonderful, but I'm more interested in ROM images
and memory grabs right now, I'm coming from an Electron perspective (which
means I'm mostly using tape images) and I'm using a Mac!

However, I'm almost certainly on the verge of implementing my own dynamic 
disassembler (i.e. one that can be used simultaneously to the emulator to 
investigate the current state and see how it evolves), and I wonder if you 
have any tips for things like detecting data segments, etc? It's arguably 
a little easier when you've got an actual Electron running over the code 
because you can use the likely coherence between the current state and recent
history to make good guesses as to where meaningful code lies but I don't
want to rely on that too strongly, as clever dynamic code can really kill
that sort of scheme.

Also, if I put together some sort of "UEF as a filing system" DLL, would 
you be at all likely to incorporate support for UEFs into your Explorer 
program? It wouldn't be a perfect fit because UEFs can hold data that doesn't 
necessarily make sense as files to the tape FS and they're theoretically 
unbounded in term of how much data can be put onto them but I've certainly
had to field questions about how to get files on and off UEFs before and
this looks like it would be a very neat solution.

-Thomas

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