IDA Pro will do 8080/8085 and is very nice -- especially if you have no source and are having to reverse-engineer the whole thing yourself. The commercial version is expensive, but there's a free version. I don't remember if the free version includes 8080/8085 mode.
The strings may be packed ASCII, to save space. There were a few methods of doing this. If there's a checksum it's not inherent to the CPU. There would need to be custom hardware on the board to enforce a hardware ROM checksum; otherwise, it's left to software and you can easily update that :) Thanks, Jonathan On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 3:01 PM, W2HX via cctalk <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi friends. I have a 1990's vintage commercial radio system that uses an > 80C85A CPU. I am looking to hopefully modify the firmware to make some > small changes in its behavior. The firmware is contained in two EPROMS. > > > Can anyone recommend a decent disassembler to use with this? Preferably > something that ran in windows 10 or windows 7? A dos box would be fine too. > > > Also, I looked through the dumped contents of the EPROM. In the past I > have seen EPROM ascii dumps where most is unintelligible to the naked eye > but typically text messages give to the users during interaction with the > program are human readable. In this case, the ASCII dump shows only other > HEX data. I believe I read that there is a HEX format and that I might > need to convert from HEX to BIN before disassembling. Of course, an ideal > tool would do both if anyone knows such a thing. > > > I am not familiar with 8085 stuff but any insight would be appreciated. > > > Lastly, I wonder if there might be some kind of checksum check to prevent > tampering. Is there a common way this is handled in 8085 world? Or is it > entirely programmer dependent? > > > Thanks for your time > > Eugene W2HX? > > >
