34blazer

Gents,

I dont know where to turn to. The past month or so I've been trying to study up on most of the information posted in the stickies. I cannot figure out what most of the information is and have decided to start looking into proper education. Since I'm military I can use electives for credit to help knock out some of the prereq's. What Im looking for is a starting point, I want to learn what ever is related so I can be able to accomplish what senior members(i.e. JP, RBob, Dimented, etc.) have been doing for some time. I need to be able to identify assembly language, various components and what they do. So can anyone recommend where to start? Im looking at AMU(american military university) right now if anyone is familiar.


TIA!

Street Lethal

iTrader: (16)

What is your goal Joe, are you looking to assemble and write your own firmware, or are you just looking to be able manipulate existing firmware?

34blazer

Im looking to start off understanding and manipulating current binarys and such, then with some experience, move on to writing my own.

Street Lethal

iTrader: (16)

The majority of the members here are hackers that disassemble existing firmware, look at the instructions in that firmware, then alter the bytes to change the characteristics of the original instructions. You just need a thorough understanding of the programming language being used (eg; C, C++, Java). The only member here that writes his own firmware is RBob, which is then compiled for a chipset that works with a family of microprocessors...

34blazer

yeah thats what im looking to learn. im sure im making it more complex than it should be, just wondering which route to take. either way im working towards a bach, so what kind of classes should i take, just C, C++, Java?

Thanks!!

RBob

iTrader: (1)

Need computer engineering classes. Such that teach assembly language, computer architecture, and hardware interfaces.

The Motorola pink book has a ton of great info in it. That is if you can understand what it means. It used to be on their web site as a .pdf file.

RBob.

84Elky

34Blazer, I was right where you were not too long ago -- frustrated that this computer thing in my car was doing stuff I did not understand. Fortunately I had C programming experience, but absolutely refused to look Assembly because it made my head hurt. So here’s what I did:

• Downloaded any and everything “6811” related and read, read, read. Google for “6811 Assembly” or “Motorola 6811” and millions of links will come up. This provided the basics of “understanding” 6811 Assembly language. I use the term “understanding’ loosely as I still don’t fully understand it.
• Downloaded and saved an explanation of the “Op Codes” (assembly language instruction set) here: http://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs301/6811-instructions.pdf. Absolutely essential IMO. I use this religiously when going through code as can’t retain the nuances of what each instruction is doing.
• Downloaded JP’s AUJP hack here (http://gearhead-efi.com/gearhead-efi...20and%20Hacks/ - select “aujp_JP2.zip) and saved a Word doc version. That way comments can be added, color coded highlighted branching can be added, etc.
• Downloaded ThrSim11 6811 Assembly language demo program here: http://www.hc11.demon.nl/thrsim11/thrsim11.htm. There are others, but are DOS based. None are perfect, but better than nothing and again absolutely essential IMO in understanding what an instruction or a code snippet is actually doing. You can visually see the results of code execution. Note however that it will not run directly under Win7. It requires XP or earlier, or a virtual machine such as VirtualBox on Win7 running XP or earlier.

The combination of the above should get you up to speed very quickly, if you consider many weeks “quickly”. Good Luck!

34blazer

Thanks for the links, ive been trying to comprehend the basics of assembly language, but i need something more basic. I have to get a degree in the future so this is a good place to start. And for completly understand the language i need to apply it directly, with help for someone who knows it.