Awesome

SplitXex

A tool to split out/extract code segments from an Atari 8-bit executable file.

Command line options

Split an Atari 8-bit executable file into components and export them.
Usage:
SplitXex in.xex [#block #block ... out.obx]
        in.xex - the input file. If this is the only parameter list the parts
        #1-#255 - The segment number to dump to the output
        out.obj - File where data is written to

How does it work

The Atari executable file format breaks the file into segments. Each segment has a header which determines where the data of the segment needs to be loaded. The program parses these headers and gives each one a sequential number.

As an example we can look at a very simple program, found in Example/rainbow.xex

FF FF E0 02 E1 02 00 20 00 20 13 20 A9 00 18 69 A0 6D 0B D4 8D 0A D4 8D 1A D0 8D 18 D0 4C 00 20

Running the tool with just the executable specified we get

Loading rainbow.xex...
Segment #1 : 02E0 with 0x0002:2 bytes
Segment #2 : 2000 with 0x0014:20 bytes

There are two segments:

#1 to be loaded at 0x02E0 has two bytes (this is the run address)
#2 to be loaded at 0x2000 has 20 bytes (this is the actual code to be executed)

To extract the code segment you do the following:

SplitXex rainbow.xex #2 next.obx

This will copy just the code segment into the next.obx file. Do note that the first segment in the target file will have the FF FF bytes prepended. This indicates that it is the first header in an executable file.

For some fun

You can rearrange the executable and move the start segment of the rainbow.xex program to the end.

splitxex rainbow.xex #2 #1 a.xex

This will copy the code segment into position 1 and the execute segment into position 2. If you run a.xex it will still work as expected.

Release Notes

1.0.0

Initial release