Dis51 is a simple 8051 disassembler for Unix-like systems. It may even compile under Microsoft Windows, but that has never been tested. It takes an object file in Intel Hex format as input, and outputs an assembly language file. This disassembler assumes by default that everything in memory is data, and nothing is code. It starts at any number of entry points you give it on the command line, then follows the code through all branches until no branches are left. It then outputs an assembly language file which should assemble under any standard 8051 assembler. All data memory is declared using "DB" directives.
Dis51 uses symbolic names for SFRs it knows about. To be compatible with as many assemblers as possible, I only defined SFRs that I thought were common to "standard" 8051s. If you need to add other SFRs (or special function bits) then the source file to modify is global.c. It should be self-explanatory how to modify it, I hope.
I wrote Dis51 mostly for fun. It was Labor Day weekend and I felt like taking a break from studies, so I started sketching out how I would design a disassembler. I probably spent no more than two weeks from preliminary design to completion of testing. I have been using the disassembler for a few months now with no problems. Another reason I created it was because I spent one afternoon downloading every free 8051 disassembler I could find on the web, and couldn't find a single one that compiled under Solaris and successfully disassembled a HEX file. I sincerely believe that such a program exists, I just couldn't find it. Thus, Dis51.
Dis51 is free to download. Get it from http://members.naspa.net/djs/software/dis51-0.5.tar.gz. It is released under the GNU Public License (GPL), which means you can download the program for free, you get the source code with it, you can change the source code to suit your needs, and you can redistribute the program with or without modifications as long as the person you distribute the program to gets the same rights you were given. If you use some of the code in your own program, then your own program should also be released under the GPL.
Dis51 should compile without changes on any Unix-like machine. It probably even works under Microsoft Windows, but I don't have a compiler to try it out. Let me know what results you get if you try this.
First you need to download the source code. If
you have GNU tar, extract the file using one of the following
commands, depending on what GNU tar is called on your system:
gtar xvfz dis51-0.5.tar.gz
tar xvfz dis51-0.5.tar.gz
If you do not have GNU tar, you can use the following command to extract
the source code:
cat dis51-0.5.tar.gz | gunzip -c - | tar -xvf -
Now edit the Makefile if necessary. If you do not have gcc on your system, change the first line from "CC=gcc" to "CC=cc" or whatever your C compiler is called. That should be the only thing you need to change. Type "make" when you are done.
That's it! I apologize for the lack of a man page, but luckily it's a pretty simple program. Copy the executable (called dis51) to a bin directory and you're ready to go.
Dis51 takes a Hex file as stdin and outputs an assembly file to stdout.
In its simplest form, you can use the following command line:
dis51 < file.hex > file.a51
Without any command line options, Dis51 uses the entry point 0. If you
want to use other entry points, list them on the command line. For
example, to disassemble a program starting at address 0 which also uses
the serial port interrupt vector at address 35:
dis51 0 35 < file.hex > file.a51
Optionally, you can give the first command line argument "-l" to
output in list format. To repeat the previous example in list format:
dis51 -l 0 35 < file.hex > file.a51
One problem with Dis51 is that it is unable to determine the target address of an indirect jump (JMP @A+DPTR). Thus if your program contains indirect jumps certain parts of code will not be disassembled. The solution is to search through the disassembled output of dis51 for the JMP @A+DPTR instruction. If you find this instruction, look for large chunks of DB directives elsewhere in the program. If you find some DB directives that you suspect are code and not data, then manually add the addresses of these directives to the command line of dis51 and run it again. Hint: 80h is the SJMP command. Lots of DB 80h directives alternated with other data bytes is likely to be a jump table.
Please send me a message if you think you have found a bug.
You may also be interested in Hexcmp, another related program which compares two hex files.
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