The DIS12 Project Page

A Disassembler for the Motorola HC12/STAR12 Family

About dis12

dis12 was written for the 68HC812A4 microprocessor. It surely works on others of the family (ie MC9S12, 68HC912), but any new opcodes introduced by them would not likely decode properly. I don't have manuals for the other members, but will make the changes to dis12 if it proves necessary.

Download dis12

The most recent version of dis12 (including make and source files) can be downloaded here:

Files used by dis12

dis12 is not as clever as the some disassemblers that automatically sort out code and data. You have to tell it which is what if you want it to care. This is done with a parameter file.

The input format for dis12 is eiter a binary memory image file or an S-Record file. dis12 will figure out which it is.

In addition, you can specify a symbol file that relates addresses to symbols and dis12 will use these in the disassembly listing.

Output Format

Rather than have different modes for test listings and assembler source, the output format is assembler source with the object as comments on the right hand side of the page. For example,

        ldaa  #'0'                    ;$FDA4 $86 $30

dis12 makes two passes over the input file. The first pass identifies addresses that are labels and builds a symbol table. The second pass then produces the disassembly using the symbol table to identify labels for branch targets, targets of immediate loads, etc. In addition, an initial extra pass is made over an S-Record file to identify the address range(s) involved.

Parameter (Control) File Format

The control file is composed of lines of the form:

code start_address end_address

The possible codes are:

a - address words (like in tables). For instance, a C compiler
    will generate an array of addresses of strings.
b - data bytes (like in tables)
c - code area
t - text area (strings)
x - ignored (read but skipped) dis12 knows what areas are
    skipped in the caese of S-Record files, but not binary
    image file. For those, dis12 must be told what bytes to
    ignore.
# - comments out the line, causing it to be ignored

The creation of the control file is a bit like black magic. There aren't any rules. You have to look at a hex dump and pick out the string and data areas and/or run dis12, examine the output, add strange areas to the control file, and repeat.

Symbol File Format

The symbol file is composed of lines of the form:

name   hex_address

There can be any amount of white space (blank or tab) between the two, but 'hex_address' must be composed of either digits or the letters 'a' to 'f' in either case. For example:

SetUserVector A000
linptr        0A04

How dis12 works

dis12 tries hard to make an intelligible disassembly, but most of the cleverness can be disabled on the command line. dis12 assumes that all direct and extended access are to use labels rather than absolute numbers, which is quite reasonable. In many programs, most immediate 8 bit references with values in the range 32 to 127 are dealing with ASCII characters, as are some 16 bit immediate references produced by compilers. The first is still pretty reasonable; the second less so. Depending on the source of the program (compiler or hand assembly), often 16 bit immediate loads reference objects in the code or data space, but this is not true of, say compares or mathematical operations. It is fairly easy to know where the code space is, but less so the data space, so dis12 only assumes the immediate loads in the code space are labels. Targets of flow chaning opcodes (subroutine calls, jumps, branches, etc) are uses as labels. So to are the targets of direct and extended memory access and 16 bit indexed and indirect indexed accesses. The -b option controls this behavior of dis12, by allowing one to selectively enable or disable each of these features.

Command Line Syntax

The current syntax and options are:

dis12 [options] file
   -a file     address classification file
   -b [+-]hhhh set the behavior of the disassembler
               'hhhh' is a bit mask composed of:
    0x0001     force 8 bit immed in 32..126 to char
    0x0002     force long immediate to symbol
    0x0004     force 9 bit pc indexed to symbol
    0x0008     force other 9 bit indexed to symbol
    0x0010     force 16 bit pc indexed to symbol
    0x0020     force other 16 bit indexed to symbol
    0x0040     force 16 bit pc indirect indexed to symbol
    0x0080     force other 16 bit indirect indexed to symbol
               a '-' prefix removes a bit and
               a '+' prefix adds a bit and
               no prefix sets the mask to the value
               the default is 0x0077
   -d          turn debug on
   -D hhhh     set debug to 'hhhh'
   -l file     write listing to 'file'
   -o hhhh     set org to 'hhhh'
   -s file     symbol mapping file

About the Author, Copyright stuff

The whole dis12 project is Copyright by

Carl Kreider
22297 CR 28
Goshen, IN 46526

dis12 was written on Linux and, as such, should run on any other unix like system. However, I have not used any esoteric features, so it should compile and run on anything that has an ANSI C compiler. One possible exception would be getopt(). I have included source for a reasonable version.

Finally, I am not releasing this under any particular freeware license, but it _is_ free, and I expect it to remain so.

Have fun!
Carl Kreider

Please send suggestions and inquiries concerning this page to ckreideraacm.org
The original URL of this page is http://hc12web.de/dis12/
Back to Oliver Thamm's HC12 Web