Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I experimented with disassembling 6502 from the c64 California Games. Claude was very prone to bullshit.


For RE cases where I know the original compiler used (a bit harder on C compilers due to huge number of obscure optimization flags), I give it a feedback loop to write a function that compiles to the original machine code.


Yeah, I had perfect disassembly, since that's a purely mechanical process. I used da65, which worked reasonably well.

But you don't get any function names that way, obviously. Claude would claim some random function were applying friction based on just a subtraction. And a variable that had 2 possible states was named player_id, when the game supports 1-8 players.

It was a bit better when the memory addresses were known IO registers, but not by much.


While somewhat counterintuitive, I have found that Claude is better at decompilation than disassembly.


AI models in general seem to get different assembly languages mixed up easily.




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: