The goal of this tutorial series is not to teach you how to write code for any platform, although we will eventually not be able to avoid some platform-specific code. Hopefully before you start this project you already know how to compile programs for your target platform.
When you are working with code that is self contained and just reads files and writes text out to a console - there really isn't any need to use some bloated development system. It really just makes things more complicated. All you need is a text editor and a terminal.
I think that everyone that wants to program at a low-level should know how to do simple programs from the command line. Consider this a nudge: Your elite hacking skills aren't worth much if you can't function outside of Visual Studio.
On the Mac, you could use TextEdit and Terminal for compiling. On Linux, you can use gedit and Konsole. On Windows, you could install cygwin and tools, then use N++ or another text editor. All these platforms support vi and emacs for text editing if you really want to be awesome.
It is trivial to compile single file programs from the command line. Say you save your program in a file named 8080dis.c. Get in the directory with your text file and compile it like this cc 8080dis.c. If you don't specify an output file name, it is going to be called a.out, and you can run it by doing ./a.out.
That's all there is to it.
If you're on one of the Unix based systems, here is a brief introduction to how to debug command line programs with GDB. You'll want to compile the program like this: cc -g -O0 8080dis.c. The -g generates debugging info (so you can debug using source), and the -O0 disables optimizations so when you step through the program, the debugger is able to accurately match the code exactly to the source.
Here's an annotated log of the start of a debugging session. My comments are the lines starting with a hash (#).
$ gdb a.out
GNU gdb 6.3.50-20050815 (Apple version gdb-1708) (Mon Aug 8 20:32:45 UTC 2011)
Copyright 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "x86_64-apple-darwin"...Reading symbols for shared libraries .. done
#set a breakpoint so the program will stop at my routine
(gdb) b Disassemble8080Op
Breakpoint 1 at 0x1000012ef: file 8080dis.c, line 7.
#start the program with "invaders.h" as the argument
(gdb) run invaders.h
Starting program: /Users/bob/Desktop/invaders/a.out invaders.h
Reading symbols for shared libraries +........................ done
Breakpoint 1, Disassemble8080Op (codebuffer=0x100801000 "", pc=0) at 8080dis.c:7
7 unsigned char *code = &codebuffer[pc];
#gdb interprets n as "next". You can also type "next"
(gdb) n
8 int opbytes = 1;
#p is short for "print", I want to see the value of *code
(gdb) p *code
$1 = 0 '\0'
(gdb) n
9 printf("%04x ", pc);
# If you just hit "return", gdb will do the same command again, in this case "next"
(gdb)
10 switch (*code)
(gdb) n
#opcode was zero, so it's going to go print "NOP"
12 case 0x00: printf("NOP"); break;
(gdb) n
285 printf("\n");
#c is "continue", so it will run until the next breakpoint
(gdb) c
Continuing.
0000 NOP
# It stopped at the top of Disassemble8080Op again. I printed *opcode,
# saw it was going to be another NOP, so I just continued.
Breakpoint 1, Disassemble8080Op (codebuffer=0x100801000 "", pc=1) at 8080dis.c:7
7 unsigned char *code = &codebuffer[pc];
(gdb) c
Continuing.
0001 NOP
Breakpoint 1, Disassemble8080Op (codebuffer=0x100801000 "", pc=2) at 8080dis.c:7
7 unsigned char *code = &codebuffer[pc];
(gdb) n
8 int opbytes = 1;
(gdb) p *code
$2 = 0 '\0'
# The 3rd NOP, not interesting
(gdb) c
Continuing.
0002 NOP
Breakpoint 1, Disassemble8080Op (codebuffer=0x100801000 "", pc=3) at 8080dis.c:7
7 unsigned char *code = &codebuffer[pc];
(gdb) n
8 int opbytes = 1;
# Here's a new opcode!
(gdb) p *code
$3 = 195 '?'
# print gives decimal by default, but you can use /x to show hexadecimal numbers
(gdb) p /x *code
$4 = 0xc3
(gdb) n
9 printf("%04x ", pc);
(gdb)
10 switch (*code)
(gdb)
# C3 is a jump. Neat.
219 case 0xc3: printf("JMP $%02x%02x",code[2],code[1]); opbytes = 3; break;
(gdb)
285 printf("\n");
← Prev: memory-maps Next: disassembler-pt-2 → Post questions or comments on Twitter @realemulator101, or if you find issues in the code, file them on the github repository.