Question about NES, GB(C), GEN and IDA PRO

[luc-ita]

Hello. I'm writing here because I your need help:
how can I load into ida pro, for disassembling and exploring the code, the game dumps for nes, gen, gb and gbc?

When I try to load a dump of these systems IDA loads it as metapc or binary file. It doesn't recognize the file as it does when I load an elf file of a PSX or PS2 game, or a snes' file dump.

Could someone help me, please?

[dlevere]

http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=11194.0

[Pyriel]

IDA generally won't do much work for you when loading dumps. You need to know the processor/architecture, and pick the appropriate value from the list. If the file isn't structured, or the system you're doing a disassembly for doesn't have any analysis modules, you'll have to manually identify code and the like to get started. There are often scripts and loader modules you can download for popular systems to help with that initial analysis, though they often rely on having a structured file of some sort, rather than a raw dump. If that's the case, you may be better of starting with a structured file (ROM or whatever) and then adding segments for any RAM or system-state dumps you created.

So just starting out for an NES dump, whatever that includes, you'd load a binary file and set the processor to the M6502 (I think it shows up under MOS Technologies 65xx series, or something like that; it varies version to version). You can probably leave the default options for that processor, unless you want to examine them, and then load the file. IDA will ask you to tell it more about what you've got (segment start addresses and sizes, which will depend on how you created the dump). After that, it'll probably throw up a mostly useless, initial disassembly, and you'll have to find the entrypoint yourself or otherwise start marking which addresses are code. You don't have to do every bit of code manually, as IDA will analyze what you mark, and work outwards, identifying as much code as it can.

[luc-ita]

Many thanks dlevere for the link and Pyriel for the informations. You've helped me alot! I'll write here again if I'll need further informations.