View .crc code un-jumbled

Question

Hi I have a firmware file which gets loaded onto video devices. The file is updated every year but there is a bug in this specific version. So I would like to take a look at the code myself.

The video device runs off linux.

I am using windows 10 64x. The file has a .crc extension (not sure if it's a cyclic redundancy check?) I can open the file in inno and can view the contents however, the file is jumbled up with nonsense characters. I would like to know what software I could use to view this file...

ALSO the manufacturer of the video device said something about using source insight but the code was still jumbled. It's difficult communicating with them because they speak another language.

Any suggestions and/or an explanation of this file will be greatly appreciated.

LINK to files 10.9MB

LINK to video of .crc file in inno jumbled 87.6MB

Answer 1

The file is likely machine code. The "nonsense characters" you're seeing are bytes of code being misinterpreted as bytes of text in some 8-bit encoding, perhaps Windows-1252. If you identify the instruction-set architecture of the devices on which the file runs, you can probably disassemble it. However, disassembly produces assembly language, not the original source code. In general, source code can't be recovered from machine code. You'd need to get a copy of the source code from the author. Debugging a dissembled program is possible, but incredibly difficult and labor-intensive unless the program is very simple.