4 ms·

"How did you debug applications on it? " With this bad boy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftICE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftICE

by snarfy 12y ago

th0ma5 12y ago
I remember meeting some hackers at their house a friend of mine took me to in the middle of nowhere, and I asked them where they got their software cracks, and they kind of blinked, and showed me the first dual monitor setup I had ever seen in person, with a regular system on the left, and the output of SoftICE on the right. I guess before that I had just assumed lower level things were unknowable, but after that I sure didn't.
- DrPhish 12y ago
  Was it the old VGA/Hercules combination? That was so badass It was also the only way to run dual-screen for a while, since it used a different memory region than colour displays. There was literally no way to run multiple colour adapters on the same computer at one point
  - th0ma5 12y ago
    Man I am just not sure. I had a Hercules green screen / more shades than CGA setup myself, but if it helps I do think both of their screens were color. I know Hercules probably did other stuff, but I guess I think monochrome whenever I think about it, heh. I do believe this was the old DOS version, not the Windows version of SoftICE, although when I was over there seemed was just before the time of Windows 95 possibly.
    - chinpokomon 12y ago
      I used the DOS version of SoftICE on a retail Windows 95 machine, to circumvent the upgrade prevention check in Windows 95 OSR2. OSR2 was an OEM only release, but I figured there had to be a way. Setting breakpoints and single stepping through the setup, I discovered that it checked for krnl386.exe. If that for existed, it was considered an upgrade. If you were a clever young hacker, you renamed that file and went ahead with the upgrade.
  - biot 12y ago
    Talk about a blast from the past! Watcom C/C++ with external amber debugging display was the best.
    - zwieback 12y ago
      Watcom was the best - with Dos Extender and 16-32 cross compiler. Worst IDE, though.
zwieback 12y ago
We used SoftICE extensively for driver debugging. I seem to remember a pushbutton that slid into the ISA slot to trigger a NMI but now I'm not quite sure anymore if it was SoftICE or Periscope that had that.
- kosma 12y ago
  I used to trigger NMI by shorting the first two pins on an empty ISA slot with a screwdriver (conveniently NMI and GND); stopped when the screwdriver slipped once. Thankfully nothing died on that day, but the cascade of sparks convinced me to install a proper button. ;)
- markbnj 12y ago
  Same, but that was all we used it for. I do recall running into some horrible memory issues on another project (Iona's Orbix, but that's another story) and wishing I had SoftICE to tear it apart with. But for most application issues it was overkill. The existing debugging tools (and 3rd party stuff like Bounds Checker) were usually good enough.

"How did you debug applications on it? " With this bad boy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftICE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftICE

by snarfy 12y ago

"How did you debug applications on it? " With this bad boy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftICE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftICE

th0ma5 12y ago

I remember meeting some hackers at their house a friend of mine took me to in the middle of nowhere, and I asked them where they got their software cracks, and they kind of blinked, and showed me the first dual monitor setup I had ever seen in person, with a regular system on the left, and the output of SoftICE on the right. I guess before that I had just assumed lower level things were unknowable, but after that I sure didn't.

DrPhish 12y ago
Was it the old VGA/Hercules combination? That was so badass It was also the only way to run dual-screen for a while, since it used a different memory region than colour displays. There was literally no way to run multiple colour adapters on the same computer at one point
- th0ma5 12y ago
  Man I am just not sure. I had a Hercules green screen / more shades than CGA setup myself, but if it helps I do think both of their screens were color. I know Hercules probably did other stuff, but I guess I think monochrome whenever I think about it, heh. I do believe this was the old DOS version, not the Windows version of SoftICE, although when I was over there seemed was just before the time of Windows 95 possibly.
  - chinpokomon 12y ago
    I used the DOS version of SoftICE on a retail Windows 95 machine, to circumvent the upgrade prevention check in Windows 95 OSR2. OSR2 was an OEM only release, but I figured there had to be a way. Setting breakpoints and single stepping through the setup, I discovered that it checked for krnl386.exe. If that for existed, it was considered an upgrade. If you were a clever young hacker, you renamed that file and went ahead with the upgrade.
- biot 12y ago
  Talk about a blast from the past! Watcom C/C++ with external amber debugging display was the best.
  - zwieback 12y ago
    Watcom was the best - with Dos Extender and 16-32 cross compiler. Worst IDE, though.

zwieback 12y ago

We used SoftICE extensively for driver debugging. I seem to remember a pushbutton that slid into the ISA slot to trigger a NMI but now I'm not quite sure anymore if it was SoftICE or Periscope that had that.

kosma 12y ago
I used to trigger NMI by shorting the first two pins on an empty ISA slot with a screwdriver (conveniently NMI and GND); stopped when the screwdriver slipped once. Thankfully nothing died on that day, but the cascade of sparks convinced me to install a proper button. ;)
markbnj 12y ago
Same, but that was all we used it for. I do recall running into some horrible memory issues on another project (Iona's Orbix, but that's another story) and wishing I had SoftICE to tear it apart with. But for most application issues it was overkill. The existing debugging tools (and 3rd party stuff like Bounds Checker) were usually good enough.