Home Forums General Discussion Technical Questions EEPROM decompiler?

Anyone know whats involved in decompiling a raw bin file of an EEPROM. I know its application specific. Does anyone have any information on this? Northern specifically.

Depends...What you are looking at in the EEPROM is a binary file. Main program usually lies in EPROM which is a binary file as well.

Usually on embedded process systems, you will need to know what processor you are running..(Intel, Motorola, DEC, TI, etc..). Then you will have to run decompiler that will support your processor to convert it to the appropriate assembly language for your processor, from the binary loaded on the chips. (Which will leave you page upon page of assembly code to figure out.)...

There are a few programs out there that will convert to Assembly to a higher level language,,,(C, C++, ) but I have found them to be unreliable...

There are many methods to skin a cat...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490635.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Disassembler

Ya I've got the binary file and can read it in assembly. But I was wondering if there is a way to convert that to C or something. Give me something that's alittle easier to decode.

As far as dissassemblers, this is the one I have used in the past for Intel based products. Mine was in DOS, but the new one has a GUI and a looks to be windows based...

http://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/index.shtml

Did a great job on creating intel binary files to intel assembly language. However you are left with reams of paper with raw assembly code. which you then have to decipher the calls to various output devices. (Keyboard, Serial Port, Video Screen, LPT1, etc...) Lots of time consuming, tedious work.

As far as taking the next step and going from assembly to a higher level language, (C, BASIC, PASCAL, etc..) I've tried a few,but none were very reliable, and left a lot of guess work..

What kind of processor does the Northern use?

Um good question. I'll have to check the card to know. Anyone else know can chime in.