1srec_msbin(5) File Formats Manual srec_msbin(5)
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6 srec_msbin - Windows CE Binary Image Data Format
7
9 This format is the output of the Microsoft WinCE Platform Builder.
10 This is a binary (non-text) file format. File names in this format
11 typically (ambiguously) use the .bin suffix.
12 File Format
14 Files in this format start with a header record.
15 Then comes the data itself, organized into records.
17 The file finishes with an execution start address record. This is
19 mandatory.
20 File Header Record
22 Data in this format start with an optional header containing the magic
23 “B000FF\n”, followed by the image start (four bytes, little endian)
24 address and the span of the image (highest address - lowest address +
25 1) (four bytes, little endian). The file header does not have a check‐
26 sum; it is therefore possible that a corrupt file header will go unde‐
27 tected.
28 ┌───────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
30 │Magic │ Least │ Greatest │
31 │“B000FF\n” │ Address │ Address │
32 │(7 bytes) │ (4 bytes) │ (4 bytes) │
33 └T─h─e─r─e──i─s──n─o─┴p─r─o─v─i─s─i─o─n──f─o─r┴─a──f─i─l─e──c─o─m─m─e┘nt of any kind.
34 Data Record
36 Each record consists of a record start address (four bytes, little
37 endian), a record length (four bytes, little endian), a record checksum
38 (four bytes, little endian), followed by the record data. The data
39 part of each record is raw byte values, no encoding.
40 ┌──────────┬───────────┬───────────┬───────────┐
42 │Start │ Length │ Checksum │ Data │
43 │address │ (4 bytes) │ (4 bytes) │ │
44 │(4 bytes) │ │ │ │
45 └──────────┴───────────┴───────────┴───────────┘
46 The checksum is calculated by a simple sum of unsigned bytes into a
47 32-bit accumulator.
48 The 12 record header bytes are not included in the record checksums; it
50 is therefore possible that a corrupt record header will go undetected.
51 It is not possible to place data at address zero with this format.
53 Address zero is reserved for use by the execution start address record.
54 There is effectively no limit on the length of a record (2^32-1). It
56 is not uncommon for a MsBin file to contain records with sizes in the
57 tens of megabytes.
58 Execution Start Address Record
60 Last comes a special record with the record address set to zero and
61 record length set to the image execution start address. According to
62 specification the record describing the execution start address must be
63 always present, and must always be the last record in the file.
64 ┌──────────┬───────────┬───────────┐
66 │Zero │ Start │ Checksum │
67 │(4 bytes) │ Address │ = 0 │
68 │ │ (4 bytes) │ (4 bytes) │
69 └──────────┴───────────┴───────────┘
70 Commentary
71 The MsBin files produced by SRecord are valid and can be successfully
72 parsed by the command line utilities viewbin and cvrtbin (part of Win‐
73 dows CE platform).
74 For a MsBin file to be usable in Microsoft WinCE Platform Builder it
76 has to contain a TOC meta-structure. This is data embedded in the file
77 by Microsoft WinCE Platform Builder itself.
78 The opposite conversion - from MsBin - comes in handy when analyzing a
80 MsBin file (i.e. a WinCE image).
81 Size Multiplier
83 In general, binary data will expand in sized by approximately 1.0 times
84 (approaching asymptotically from above) when represented with this for‐
85 mat, as the 15‐byte file header is averaged over the data content.
86 Holes in the data will also increase the size.
87
89 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms924510.aspx
90
92 srec_cat version 1.55
93 Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006,
94 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Peter Miller
95 The srec_cat program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use
97 the 'srec_cat -VERSion License' command. This is free software and you
98 are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; for details
99 use the 'srec_cat -VERSion License' command.
100
102 Peter Miller E‐Mail: pmiller@opensource.org.au
103 /\/\* WWW: http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/
104Reference Manual SRecord srec_msbin(5)