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Reverse Engineering an MPEG Driver

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the how-we-do dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Following on from the recent spate of reverse engineering articles, there is an interesting summary of the reverse engineering of a binary only Linux driver. The driver is for the integrated MPEG decoder on VIA's popular EPIA-M boards. At the moment VIA has not publicly released the source code for the MPEG chipset on these boards and will only make the code available under NDA saying that "Typically, only requests from companies developing product for sale will be approved." As a result this is holding back development of open source tools (e.g. xine, mplayer, vdr) that would be able to make use of the interesting hardware on these boards."

12 of 275 comments (clear)

  1. Er... by slackingme · · Score: 5, Funny

    But does it ru--
    Nevermind, no points to spare :)

  2. Cool! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Let's harass them for not releasing the code, reverse engineer it and post it everywhere, until they get mad and discontinue Linux driver development altogether! Then xine and mplayer will work GREAT!

    1. Re:Cool! by El · · Score: 5, Funny

      Better yet, lets reverse engineer the Windows drivers instead of the Linux drivers, so then they'll get mad and discontinue Windows driver development altogether! Yeah, right...

      --

      "Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

  3. C vs. assembler by Atario · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the article:

    Also some of the logic could be detemined by decoding binary flag fields. For example:

    push gVIAGraphicInfo
    push 805476C3h
    push fVideo
    call ioctl

    Can now be decoded into the rather more readable:-

    ioctl(fVideo,
    _IOR('v', //118 192+3,
    VIAGRAPHICINFO),//0x805476C3, &gVIAGraphicInfo )

    Oh yeah. Much more readable.

    --
    "A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
  4. Haven't you people learned your lesson by brainchill · · Score: 1, Funny

    As if it wasn't bad enough that you open source dorks stole the entire SysV Unix codebase from SCO now you want to reverse engineer someone elses work to rip it off so that you can watch dvd's. They have this new thing available now for $35 at your local walmart ... it's called a dvd player and it was made to watch movies on your tv. J/k :-)

  5. Re:Is this reverse engineering? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    NO ONE is safe from terrible US IP laws! Our chief weapon is...are...that is to say among our chief weapons are...

    OUR CHIEF WEAPONRY INCLUDES...

    I've buggered the Monty Python reference. Sod it, I'll post again.

  6. Driver model broken by blair1q · · Score: 1, Funny

    If you have to reverse-engineer a driver, what the fuck good is it?

  7. Re:Is this reverse engineering? by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "You honestly think that simply living in Italy is enough to protect him? Have we learned nothing from reading Slashdot?"

    I've learned that paranoia is an epidemic.

  8. Re:A link to just that: Reverse Engineering Compil by shird · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ironically, the sources to that "Reverse Engineering Compiler" are not available in the public domain...

    --
    I.O.U One Sig.
  9. reverse engineering? by sewagemaster · · Score: 2, Funny

    reverse "engineering"?
    is that what it's called now?

    back in the day, i used to just double click on the mpeg clip on my computer, and all you could see were "reverse cowgirls". whatever these "engineers" (or pr0nstars as we used to call them) are doing is just great. My "intellectual property" is now as WIDE-OPEN as open source for you!

    ackk kids.... when do they ever use the proper symmentics.. (old man like me cant spell...)

    --
    my blog
  10. Hear! Hear! Author! Author! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny


    And yes, I knew you can't lend your vacuum cleaner to your neighbor here in Denver. You think I'm an idiot.

  11. Re:CLE266.tgz mirror (original slashdotted) by Upphew · · Score: 1, Funny

    Or should we say: be nice to .it?