Bulk disassembly of programs possible?

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Nomad
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Bulk disassembly of programs possible?

Post by Nomad »

I was thinking last night, it would be great to have a bulk disassembly of the non-protected programs from say a large archive of spectrum software.

That could be useful in tracing how various programming techniques evolved/fell into disuse over time. The popularity of certain approaches (was it more common to have incrementing loops or decrementing loops? or about the same?) . It could then be possible to trace these and see if there is a statistical difference between say one software houses software vs another.

Other questions like:
What was the most popular rom call?
What rom calls fell into disuse vs custom routines?
What were the unpopular rom calls.
What were the input routine variants.
How much support was there for the various peripherals in real terms across the range of software for any given year.

To be able to search for patterns in a large data set would give lots of potential examples for things like tutorials, white papers..
Wall_Axe
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Re: Bulk disassembly of programs possible?

Post by Wall_Axe »

it would be interesting,
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Ast A. Moore
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Re: Bulk disassembly of programs possible?

Post by Ast A. Moore »

Nomad wrote: Sun Jan 07, 2018 2:03 am What was the most popular rom call?
What rom calls fell into disuse vs custom routines?
What were the unpopular rom calls.
What were the input routine variants.
How much support was there for the various peripherals in real terms across the range of software for any given year.
These are all very interesting questions for a . . . historian. From the practical point of view, you’ll be better off figuring all this by yourself. Trust me on this one, young Nomad. You’ll see the wisdom of my words when you’ve become a more experienced programmer. :D
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
Nomad
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Re: Bulk disassembly of programs possible?

Post by Nomad »

Haha, Ok will defer to your wisdom sensei :D
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