Detector Code

[Danno]

Hi,
I was wondering if anybody has ever extracted the code out of a Whites Spectra V3i, it would make an interesting project to do an emulator of the V3i on a PC.

[ivconic]

Hi,
I was wondering if anybody has ever extracted the code out of a Whites Spectra V3i, it would make an interesting project to do an emulator of the V3i on a PC.

I don't think it is possible. At least without special lab for such tasks. Very expensive lab!
There is not much sense in investing money in such equipment, while the final goal is not providing any closer refunding to justify such undertake.
Especially if we talk about metal detectors like Spectra V3i is. It already took it's share on markets worldwide.
It may have some sense to try with products with more certain future on markets.
But that's already taken care by guys from China. You simply can not compete with them.
As for the emulator; that's interesting idea. Good idea indeed. Something like Minelab Explorer & E-Trac emulators.
But you don't need source code from original machine to make emulator.
You only need to mimic the behavior of original machine. It is doable.
But main question is; why the heck guys from White's didn't done that already?
As i understand the philosophy of business and marketing; it would be their direct interest to make emulators for their products.
Sort of a "teaser". First you get free emulator and play a while with it on your pc computer.
Than you supposed to become "teased" enough to decide to buy the product.
Maybe i am wrong.
But most certainly i would like to see emulators for all the md models i had so far ... and those i hadn't so far too.

[Carl-NC]

Actually, the V3 uses a micro with no internal flash, so everything is in external flash. Easy to read out, no hacking required. Decompile the binary, then you have a gazillion lines of uncommented assembly language to wade through. Good luck with that.

The original code was written in C++, and after the authors left White's no one at White's has been able to pick up even the original code and do anything with it. It's enormous.

[Danno]

Actually, the V3 uses a micro with no internal flash, so everything is in external flash. Easy to read out, no hacking required. Decompile the binary, then you have a gazillion lines of uncommented assembly language to wade through. Good luck with that.

The original code was written in C++, and after the authors left White's no one at White's has been able to pick up even the original code and do anything with it. It's enormous.

Is the code on a ROM, is it a case of dumping the ROM and then finding an opcode disassembler to convert it back to C++?
How is it easy to read out and save as a BIN File?

[waltr]

Is the code on a ROM, is it a case of dumping the ROM and then finding an opcode disassembler to convert it back to C++?
How is it easy to read out and save as a BIN File?

A disassembler converts the 'machine' code into Assembler code NOT into C code.
This requires a Very experienced person that knows what assembler code is generated from C code by the Compiler used to read then understand what the assembler code is doing.

It can be done but as Carl said, very difficult and time consuming.

Are you volunteering to do this?

[Carl-NC]

Is the code on a ROM, is it a case of dumping the ROM and then finding an opcode disassembler to convert it back to C++?
How is it easy to read out and save as a BIN File?

Easy to read it out. Easy to reverse-compile to assembly language. Then it would be your worst nightmare to figure out.

[kosacid]

yes cos you're just working with hints basically you have to rebuild the functions manually and its a nightmare, how good would it be to directly convert to c++

[Teleno]

yes cos you're just working with hints basically you have to rebuild the functions manually and its a nightmare, how good would it be to directly convert to c++

There are decompilers out there, can convert assembly back to C depending of course on the processor. For ARM processors there's for example Snowman https://github.com/yegord/snowman

• Supports ARM, x86, and x86-64 architectures.
  
• Reads ELF, Mach-O, and PE file formats.
  
• Reconstructs functions, their names and arguments, local and global variables, expressions, integer, pointer and structural types, all types of control-flow structures, including switch.
  
• Has a nice graphical user interface with one-click navigation between the assembler code and the reconstructed program.
  
• Has a command-line interface for batch processing.

[eclipse]

Check out Hex - Rays IDA

[ivconic]

Keep in mind various obfuscation techniques that may be involved.
For pure cloning i guess something can be done.
I remember the times of arcade games.
Later on various emulators appeared, using genuine ROM raw copies.
So it is doable. If goal is simple cloning and use in emulator.
But emulator engine would be the problem of itself.
Too much headache and for what?

[Danno]

Thanks guys for answers so far, I am interested into looking deeper into this,

Does any body have the code for the V3i? as I don;t have one to hand.

[Dave J.]

If you had the code for the V3i, you could operate an actual V3i with it. There's even an instruction manual published on how to do it. Not necessarily such an easy project, but thousands have done it. The complete kit is about $1500, and you get an actual swinging metal detector out of the deal.

However if you want to emulate the function of machine code extracted from ROM, you'd be much better off starting with something that's got about ten machine code instructions and you already know what the machine does. For that matter, there are DIY projects on this website with documented code you could experiment with.

[EL NINO]

...As a user of the Whites Spectra V3 and V3i detectors I would have one question: How to break the code-program Spektra was a change from -3F multifrequencies: 2.5k kHz-7.5kHz-22.5kHz to the option to use 2X extend the 3f multifrequency range to 5kHz-15kHz-45kHz ?

[Danno]

If you had the code for the V3i, you could operate an actual V3i with it. There's even an instruction manual published on how to do it. Not necessarily such an easy project, but thousands have done it. The complete kit is about $1500, and you get an actual swinging metal detector out of the deal.

However if you want to emulate the function of machine code extracted from ROM, you'd be much better off starting with something that's got about ten machine code instructions and you already know what the machine does. For that matter, there are DIY projects on this website with documented code you could experiment with.

Thanks, it does make sense what you say to start smaller, I will have a look at the DIY projects on here.
Where is the instruction manual you mention published?

[Dave J.]

https://www.whiteselectronics.com/manual/spectra-v3i/