Insights from the MAME project into hardware reverse engineering

Proposta de palestra enviada para a conferência LibrePlanet 2016

Hardware reverse engineering insights from the MAME project: a path towards free firmware.

Bio

Felipe Sanches is a software freedom activist and developer who became a libre hardware designer when co-funding Metamáquina, a brazilian 3d printing company. Felipe has contributed to the development of graphic design, CAD and 3d modelling and 3d printing libre software such as Inkscape, OpenSCAD, Pronterface e GNU LibreDWG. He is also a co-fundador of Garoa Hacker Clube, the first brazilian hackerspace, and of PoliGNU: the Free Software Studies Group of the engineering school at University of São Paulo. During the last few years, Felipe has also engaged in the development of emulation drivers, being a frequent code contributor to the MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) and MESS (Multiple Emulator Super System) projects.

See also: https://www.fsf.org/working-together/profiles/felipe-sanches

Description

The MAME project's main stated purpose is the historical preservation of old computer hardware. The strategy for achieving that goal is by inspecting the devices and by developing emulators for them. While most hardware is undocumented and relies on proprietary firmware, the MAME development community has nurtured strong reverse engineering practices.

The techniques that we need to master in order to develop new emulators include reverse engineering procedures that are also very useful for aiding in the creation of free firmware solutions to replace the non-free blobs used in a broad variety of daily-use devices. These skills are also useful for the development of free drivers for undocumented devices and in the porting of operating systems and BIOSes to new hardware platforms. We need to strengthen a community of skillful hardware reverse engineers so that we can solve the freedom issues denounced by projects such as Linux-Libre and Libreboot.