Ancient!? shiiiit, im old ;-D how about AFD/SFD then? https://vulms.vu.edu.pk/Courses/CS401/Downloads/AFD_Tutorial...
Advanced full screen debugger?
Was cool seeing it go into DOS interrupt handlers
SoftICE
71–80 of 85 posts
Re: SoftICE
#72This part of the explanation of what happened to it is extremely unsatisfying: > As of April 3, 2006 the DriverStudio product family has been discontinued because of "a variety of technical and business issues as well as general market conditions". Maintenance support was offered until March 31, 2007. From reading about SoftICE, it seems to have been doing what other debuggers could not. So how could they not find en…
Perhaps it has less of a market when you can affordably run Windows in a VM these days?
Re: SoftICE
#73This part of the explanation of what happened to it is extremely unsatisfying: > As of April 3, 2006 the DriverStudio product family has been discontinued because of "a variety of technical and business issues as well as general market conditions". Maintenance support was offered until March 31, 2007. From reading about SoftICE, it seems to have been doing what other debuggers could not. So how could they not find en…
Former kernel developer here.
SoftIce was one of those "magical software" that made things possible. Before, you would need two computers connected via a serial port to do actual kernel debugging.
When VMWare arrived, SoftIce was becoming less useful, because a virtual machine offers better isolation and you can quickly revert to a previous state. When doing, for example, file system development, trashing a computer would not be rare.
By then, I know my setup was VMWare machines + MSFT WinDbg. Also, I could stop my VM and inspect the VM with a hex editor. Potent combo.
In parallel, during that time, I suspect the cost of developing SoftIce exploded: more updates from MSFT, a lot of security features that would prevent SoftIce from working, new features from the CPU like hardware protection of the RAM, etc.
Last, the most significant user base of SoftIce was broke hackers who would use it to crack protections. Unsurprisingly, those guys didn't have a license.
Awesome product, but makes sense it faded out.
Re: SoftICE
#74Probably the best software I had ever used.
As a debugger you could automate everything and catch any error in existence. It made myself hundreds of times more productive.
I maintained a Windows partition just for using it. I used Linux and mac but I usually debuged my programs on SoftIce under Windows. I had to port all my programs to use it. It was that good.
I learned how to use it from a cracking group. It took a long time to be proficient at it, but even to this day lldb or gdb or anything in Windows can't come close of what SoftIce could do.
Re: SoftICE
#75If SoftICE, then not without its awesome addon IceExt - https://sourceforge.net/projects/iceext/
It had a kernel-mode mp3 player so that you could shred software protections while listening to your favorite music (among other cool features of course)
Re: SoftICE
#76I recall those lessons for script-kiddies “Crack [software name here] with SoftICE” in early 2000s.
I tried and failed to fully follow those, but it set me on a path to where I am today. Thank you, late 90's crack tutorial authors!
Re: SoftICE
#77Oh man, SoftICE was the shit. It was a bit inconvenient to have to reboot with it enabled, but it allowed you to debug things no other debugger did. I was equally impressed with OllyDBG later on, it was more convenient (if less powerful but always seemed like amazing software for just one author.
IDA Pro was also something I remember playing around with at some point during this time period when SoftICE was also well known and used.
Can't say I've done any low level debugging or attempts at reverse engineering since long ago though. Most work these days is abstracted so far above these layers you don't have to go down nearly as deep to muck around. Plus as an adult, many tasks these tools are useful for aren't in business interests (outside of security and driver development). It goes to show how much development has sort of shifted in the past 20 years.
Re: SoftICE
#78Ancient? Ughh. I remember using SoftICE to cheat in games back in the 1990’s. Wonderful software, I wish I would’ve been knowledgeable to do something more useful than making myself invincible in Mortal Kombat or giving my characters super powers in UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka: X-Com outside North America). This was a great learning tool to understand how programs actually allocate and use memory. Long before I had taken…
SoftICE oozed of hax0rz. I did the same thing, training old games like Alley Cat, Digdug, Eagle's Nest, Captain Comic etc. All about getting infinite life, energy, ammo. Then it was cracking copy protection. A couple of NOP's and a JMP to the correct place (for the easy ones). #cracking4newbies on EFnet. +ORC (Old Red Cracker), +Fravia and everyone in +HCU (High Cracking University). Wow.. I remember I used to have d…
I really enjoyed Fravia's page back in the day and one of my all time favorite sites by +Malattia (had to search a bit to find it): http://3564020356.org/
Which reminds me...I never figured out that hash-maze but back in the day I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Maybe current-day me will fare better.
Re: SoftICE
#79Who else had a monochrome monitor to display Soft-ICE info while debugging video-intensive programs? Text at B000:0000 instead of B800:0000.
I had always wondered about that feature. I reckon Turbo Debugger supported it too but MDA adapters were hard to find when I started my debugging adventures.
I didn't realize until now that a Herc was an upgrade over a plain MDA card. I'd forgotten how many discrete chips there were and the size of the board! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Graphics_Card
edit: The herc being the MDA compatible card that I had to debug on.
Re: SoftICE
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup! Discovering SoftICE was a game changer. Various advanced SoftICE diablo 1 and diablo 2 multiplayer “enhancements” circulated back in the day... ones like bypassing the maximum level cap, making your user not render in multiplayer so you couldn’t be clicked on during pvp, among others. +orc and fravia +hcu stuff ate up loads of my free time in the late 90s and definitely helped later on once I got a formal comput…
> game changer lol
Well spotted!