Ep. 3 - Out of Hibernation

Show Notes

Intro/Hiatus

• Aaron:

• • Getting back into playing with SDR some and playing with the ADALM-PLUTO and pysdr. Pysdr.org

  • Playing with the imgui framework https://github.com/ocornut/imgui

    • Idea: want to work on some decompilation and visualization pieces

    • Idea: want a general framework for doing emulation stuff.

To Check out: Capstone, Unicorn https://www.capstone-engine.org/ https://www.unicorn-engine.org/showcase/

• • • Idea: want a gnu-radio like program which is compatible with sigMF

  • Printer tear-down

• Dell:

  • Also working on some SDR stuff. Working with some work tools, and gnuradio to get a better handle on some sdr things like constellation mapping/perms.

  • Trying to build gnuradio on rocky 9. Sucks. WTF QWT?

    • Rocky Linux https://rockylinux.org/

News:

• I think it would be great to talk about Ben Eater’s video taking about hacking the weird TV censoring device.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6EWIh2D1NQ

  • ‘A Parable of the Importance of Tools; or, Build your own fucking birdfeeder’ - not only can you pick a deeper understanding of something if you create it cradle to grave (may be the only way to pick it up), but there is a personal satisfaction in doing it yourself. You can’t buy that experience (we talked about that the other day). You can’t buy that knowledge. It comes with doing or attempting to do the work.

    • https://miccah.io/assets/birdfeeder.pdf

"How could he do these things? Because he built his own fucking birdfeeders, that’s how. So when you’re tooling around with a from-scratch tool, your own hex editor or interactive disassembler, and your neighbors tell you to use 010 or to use IDA or to use this or use that, do what Noah and Howie would do. Look ’em in the eye and say, “I’m building my own fucking birdfeeder.”

Recap Last Show, Roll Into This One.

• Last Show:

  • Talked about investigating the chips, some sites to look stuff up.

    • Fcc.io

    • Wayback machine

    • Manualslib.com

    • Datasheetsarchive.com

    • Datasheetcatalog.com

    • Bitsavers.org

    • Mouser, jameco, digikey if more modern

    • Asking on forums if the chip had an NDA

      • The eevblog forums seem to be solid for this.

  • Up now, talked about using the C232HM cable that supports JTAG, SPI, and I2C, installing libmpsse

  • Placeholder is up for TL866, didn’t close the loop on that – will be doing that soon though. There is also this for the TL866: https://github.com/JohnDMcMaster/open-tl866 if you don’t trust the firmware/software. Not perfect but it’s an option.

• Next show (what to do after you have some firmware off of the flash)