Learning how to disassemble binaries used to take huge books of tables, often error-ridden, and careful reading of near-identical bytes to reverse to something approaching human readable.
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I remember my hacker friend scrolling through code and making the occasional edit, cracking the protection on the game. It was complete voodoo to me. I was in awe. That was on the 64.
Didn't watch the whole thing, but it brought back memories of my late husband. He loved the 6502 chip, and built a Kim computer, which I still have. All of our early computers were based on the 6502, including our Apple II Plus. Thanks for the memories.
In the VERY old days, you just got hex codes, so you had to look up the opcode that the hex code corresponded to. I've actually still got a book with those tables around somewhere, although thankfully I started on a C64 so I never needed them (Super Snapshot v5 ftw!)
There are like 50 relevant opcodes on the 6502. It won't take long to learn them by heart, but of course a proper assembler/disassembler makes it a lot easier. I wrote my first C64 assembly programs in the 2010s with modern tools and I still know most of the opcodes from memory.
I just remember typing as my brother would read the code out of a game magazine. Days of it, and then the game was absolute shit. We did like 3, and one we had to check 3 times, a fuckin' whore. Some rando obvious in there. And that game was the worst, then bbs's came.
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https://youtu.be/WEliEAc3ZyA?si=qM_poYG-2CgVRmtH
assembly IS machine language.
it's your understanding that needs time. the code is easily converted back and forth