Re: [TUHS] Disassemblers

Ah -- if it was adb you redid, no doubt of its power. I used adb for a long time -- PDP-11/VAX/68K but as you said, you could learn a lot about your system. FWIW: we embedded adb into RTU, calling it kdb. We didn't have no fancy VMs to run the system under, when it halted, it halted. On a personal machine that was not a problem and adb/kdb was very cool. Clem On Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 5:50 PM Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Although upon reflection, I think what I did was fix 'adb' and call it > 'db'. Haven't had my coffee yet this morning. > > -rob > > > On Sun, Jun 20, 2021 at 7:49 AM Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> For v8 or thereabouts, I spent some time fixing some fundamental bugs in >> db and found that it was arcane but remarkably powerful. Since it was lower >> level, it avoided the endemic debugging problem of misleading you about >> your program: All it could do was tell you what the machine was doing. >> (Cdb, sdb, and adb were, at least in my experience, always lying to you.) I >> may be the only person who appreciated db fully. Once the bugs were gone >> you really could use it to good effect, as long as you understood the CPU. >> >> But it was buggy and arcane, no question about that. >> >> -rob >> >> >> >> >> On Sun, Jun 20, 2021 at 6:46 AM Richard Salz <rich.salz(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> I remember compiling and playing Langston's "empire" that I was told >>> came from a decompiled executable. This was in the 4.2 days. >>> >>