If you really want to hack software, you are going to face a time when you have to take apart someone’s machine code. If you aren’t very organized, it might even be your own — source code does get lost. If you want to impress everyone, you’ll just read through the hex code (well, the really tough old birds will read it in binary). That was hard to do even when CPUs only had a handful of instructions.
A more practical approach is to use a tool called a disassembler. This is nothing more than a program that converts numeric machine code into symbolic instructions. The devil, of course, is in the details. Real programs are messy. The disassembler can’t always figure out the difference between code and data, for example. The transition points between data and code can also be tricky.
When Not to Use
If you are coding your own program in assembly, a disassembler isn’t usually necessary. The disassembly can’t recover things like variable names, some function names, and — of course — comments. If you use a high-level language and you want to check your compiler output, you can easily have the compiler provide assembly language output (see below).
The real value of a disassembler is when you don’t have the source code. But it isn’t easy, especially for anything nontrivial. Be prepared to do a lot of detective work in most cases.
Lets use some cool retro transistors! I merrily go along for hours designing away. Carefully balancing the current of the long tailed pair input. Picking just the right collector power resistor and capacitor value to drive the transformer. Calculating the negative feedback circuit for proper low frequency cutoff and high frequency stability, and into the breadboard the parts go — jumper clips, meter probes, and test leads abound — a truly joyful event.
