Avian’s Blog

My recent work on the redesign of the Galaksija computer reminded me of some old books about Spectrum I have on my bookshelf. One of them is the The Complete Spectrum ROM Disassembly. I never actually read it before. Back when I was playing with Spectrum the lack of pictures and confusing assembly language was enough remove all my interest.

Now when I'm reading it, I am surprised at how much has changed since then. Here is a book with the complete contents of Spectrum's ROM (its "operating system"), together with detailed commentary for each function and each line of code. All that from authors that were not affiliated with Sinclair in any way (as far as I can see from the book).

Publishing a book like that today would probably be like taping a big sign "Sue me" on your forehead. Reverse engineering is not something people usually like being connected to (not to mention that it can be even illegal in some weird countries). It is either done in laboratories of big companies (from which you don't hear much but I'm sure they exist) or more or less anonymously on various internet forums (just look for example at game console modders). Imagine how a XBox complete ROM dissasembly book would be welcomed by Microsoft.