I have to jump in here. If anyone remembers (and especially wrote
code for) the Amiga, you are probably aware of the many `legends' of
those days. I was once a moderator in the McGraw-Hill/BYTE BIX
network's Amiga Exchange with developer access. An incredible young
fella named Leo Schaub (sp?) use to log-in and say something like;
`I wrote a 680xx assembler (or compiler) last night (or last week)'
and he really did. I'm really [OT} now but I can't help remember the
`genius' of that development team. The likes of Jay Miner (God Bless),
R.J. Michael, Carl Sassenrath (SP?), Dave (Hazy) Haynie, and many more.

   Today, I'm 49 and I'm looking back over a lot of years in the field
from the first microprocessors and before. I'll spare all the early
uP stories with the 4004, 8008, 1802, 68xx, 65xx, 8/Z8x, etc. But those
were exciting times. There use to be such a free and open exchange of
ideas, code, and tools. The Amiga was like that. Then everything seemed
too commercial. Tools were too expensive for those `closet genius'. I'm
very impressed with the PIC community, from the beginner to the experts.
I've quietly read many of your messages and remember many of you when
your first post was something like; "Help!" or "I'm a newbie". Now many
of you are teaching `old dogs' like me new tricks. Thankyou!

   - Tom

At 12:18 PM 1/22/99 EST, you wrote:
>In a message dated 1/21/99 11:50:17 PM Pacific Standard Time,
>will@TRADEWARE.COM writes:
>
><<
> I've written compilers and assemblers in the past, and I know
> what's involved (including in the reverse), so I have to ask
> other experienced guys if you can buy it.  I mean, assuming
> the guy had a symbolic dissasembler generator on hand, in a
> period of 24 hours, he still would have had to:
>
> a) get his hands on the 16F84 instruction set and register assignments
>    then plug them into his generator.
> b) figure out the proprietary methods used by MicroMint
>    to access the off-board A/D and EEPROM.
> c) Work his way through almost a K of machine code, without familiarity
>    with PICs, and somehow discover an obscure application bug, with
>    no working hardware.  Much of the code is integer math.
> d) do the I/O hardware mapping, which implies at least a certain
>    degree of hardware knowledge, and I'm not really sure he's got that.
>
> I mean, they guy's a good coder, but even knowing PICS, I figure if
> I sat down with the above criteria, and had nothing to do for a week
> but eat and sleep, I MIGHT be able to do the same.
>
> Do you think his story is even remotely plausible, or am I seriously
> justified in thinking he got his hands on the source, then generated
> fog to hide his tracks?
>
> Could *you* do it in one day, if, say, you only knew Motorola chip sets?
>
> -Will
> "Life is a meritocracy"
>  >>
>
>
>Hi Will!
>Yes I think its fesable.
>Disassemblers arent that hard.  I have a MC6800 dissasembler that is 2 pages
>of Turbo pascal code and a data file.  It was written in one evening.
>Certainly a PIC with only 35 instructions and very few addressing modes could
>be done just as easily.  The PIC info is readily available on the net.
>
>Dave Duley
>www.dreitek.com
>
>