PropScript Bit Inspector

Background

The Propeller Chip is an innovative micro controller with eight internal processors (called cogs) which can execute in parallel. It offers 32 I/O pins and a clock frequency of up to 80Mhz. The Propeller Chip can be programmed ina language Spin using a programming environment called the Propeller Tool which is available as free download. The Propeller Tool can also include blocks of low propeller assembly language code (PASM).

The end result of the compiled output of the Propeller Tool (or other third party tools) is a binary file which contains the instructions which can be downloaded into the Propeller Chip and executed. These binary files can contain Spin bytecodes (Spin is an interpreted language) or a mixture of Spin and Propeller Assembly Language (PASM) instructions.

PropScript is an open source, low level compiled language and IDE currently under development by the author of the PropScript Bit Inspector software. It is not yet available for download.

The PropScript Bit Inspector

The PropScript Bit Inspector is a tool which can display the contents of .binary and .eeprom files which are intended to be loaded and executed on the Propeller Chip. Among other interpretations and presentation abilities, the software can disassemble the sections of those files which contain PASM binary codes. Note: the PropScript Bit Inspector software cannot interpret Spin byte code and simply annotates bytes representing such code with the word SPIN .

The PropScript Bit Inspector software was developed to assist with the interpretation and validation of the output of the (as yet) unavailable PropScript Compiler. It is released under the the MIT License in the thought that it could be a useful, if somewhat specialized, tool for other low level developers and programers developing software for the Propeller Chip.

Capabilities

• Reads both Propeller .binary and .eeprom files
• Interprets the binary header bytes and presents them on the display
• Can display the file contents in hex format.
• Optionally can display the file contents in binary format.
• Optionally can undo the Little Endian byte order when presenting the file contents.
• Optionally displays PASM code in a disassembled manner with forward and back label references.
• Will substitute values such as DIRA or OUTA for known standard addresses in the disassembler display.
• Moving the edit carat over lines in the display panel will dynamically update a display showing the disassembled PASM opcodes for that line split out into the various instruction components.
• Cannot interpret Spin language byte codes beyond identifying them and labeling them as SPIN
• Contains a handy converter which enables a user to enter four hex bytes (assumed to be a binary PASM instruction) in various formats such as hex, binary, little endian hex, little endian binary and to see the output in a variety of formats.
• The exe file requires the .NET 2.0 runtime.
• The software was written in C# and a Visual Studio 2005 solution and project are included with the source code.

License

This software is offered as a binary and with source code under the terms of the the MIT License.

Download

• PropScriptBitInspector.zip (540 kb) zipped binary and source code. This is version 01.01 - here is the version change log.

Acknowledgements

Various small snippets of open source code have been obtained and included in the software. Full credit has been given in the source code comments where appropriate.

Screenshots

The Binary File Display panel of the PropScript Bit Inspector

The Instruction Converter panel of the PropScript Bit Inspector