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From: sl@van-bc.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Binary newsgroups (was: new group for Atari ST software)
Message-ID: <544@van-bc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Mar-87 02:33:19 EST
Article-I.D.: van-bc.544
Posted: Mon Mar 30 02:33:19 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 31-Mar-87 05:05:01 EST
References: <882@imagen.UUCP> <1073@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> <1271@husc6.UUCP> <17795@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <90@umich.UUCP>
Reply-To: sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne)
Organization: Public Access Network, Vancouver, BC.
Lines: 28
Xref: utgpu news.groups:567 comp.sys.atari.st:2427

In article <90@umich.UUCP> jtr485@umich.UUCP (Johnathan Tainter) writes:
>In article <17795@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, apteryx@ucbvax.UUCP writes:
>> >1) Binary isn't retargetable...
>> >2) Binary isn't adaptable...
>> >3) Binary isn't fixable...
>But source in any language you know can be translated to another language
>you know.  It just makes the retargeting and adapting more work.
>
>Have you ever disassembled a binary and recoded it?

Well, yes. There are some execellent dis-assemblers around these days. 

A case in point on the Macintosh is MacNosy. It makes mince meat out of
most object programs. To the point that you can definitely re-target (at
least to other 680X0's), adapt and fix. Within reason of course. 

Interestly, when doing this type of thing working with compiler generated
code tends to be much easier to work with, except where a very good
optimizing compiler was used.

In my case I used MacNosy extensively to nose around in the Mac operating
system, ROM etc, to find out how to actually get in and do things that where
not documented all that well at the time.



-- 
Stuart Lynne	ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!van-bc!sl     Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532