RomRaider

Since my ECU is undefined I've spent the last week attempting to teach myself how to find maps and write definitions. To learn I am using a dump of a ROM that is already defined just to become familiar. I have decompiled the ROM.bin in Gihdra for it to be opened in wols. Then I open the .xml in notepad++ to look up the address of some maps to get an idea of what they look like in wols. However, I am able to find nothing.
If I am unable to find maps on an already defined ROM, I have no clue how I am supposed to find maps on my unsupported ecu.
Anywhere I can learn more about these programs or defining ROM?
I've read as much as I can about hexadecimal, uint8/uint16, and other programing jargon. I feel like I've hit a dead end.
I would love to learn how to do this, But since I am not a computer programmer by trade is it worth my time?
Should I spend then next 6 months trying to figure this out, or just by UpRev Tuner as I am a lowly technician?

You just open up the .bin file from your original dumps. You don’t need to use a decompiled dump. I feel like wols is struggling to show you the proper data due to the fact that you’re using decompiled dumps. Go to the high octane ignition map for a defined ROM and set it to uint8 mode. Do this for the regular dump and for the decompiled dump. Do they look identical or do they vary?

But for whether it’s worth it or not, I think it most definitely is worth it! It took me eight months to learn rom disassembly, learn ida pro, learn wols, learn definition formats, etc and I ended up with 2,036 maps defined! So with you only needing to learn rom disassembly and wols, you should be able to define as many maps as you want with ease! The longest part for me was transferring the maps to the definition template and figuring out wtf 99% of them do haha

Ill give that first part a try once I get home.


Yeah from everything I read and the videos I've watched finding the maps looks very easy, but I feel like with my decompiled rom a lot of the addresses weren't lining up. I looked at your CF48D.xml and that stuff looks tedious to write. Identifying my whole ECU would be cool, but I need to have more reasonable goals for the meantime. I will try looking at the raw .bin in wols and let you know what I find.
Thank you for your help

Yea I feel like the issue is in trying to look at the decompiled ROM. Because everything lined up perfectly with the non decompiled one haha Oh it’s VERY tedious lol But if you use the ROM base “A2L” all you need to do if label the storage addresses for the maps. So you don’t have to add anything to the definition template. So you have the easy part lol Keep us updated!

"decompiled dump" ? What are you guys talking about ? A ROM dump is that 512k / 1024k .bin file, it doesn't change if you disassemble / decompile it in IDA, ghidra, or view it in wols... these programs only interpret and show the file's content.

I suspect at this point it'll be mostly a matter of spending some more time with the tools, esp. on known + defined ROMs as was suggested.

I’m thinking he saves the file in ghidra then tries opening the saved file in wols. I’m not sure on how Ghidra operates but with Ida, you can save a file and it’ll save it as an ida file. (1,024kb .bin vs 13,945kb IdaPro)

So if ghidra does the same thing, then that very well could be the issue. From how he made it sound, it sounds like that would be the case. But we’ll find out when he tests it out I suppose.