Image: reddit.com · Vintage audio codec reverse engineering with Claude
A vintage toy audio codec reverse engineered and rewritten in Rust
Claude Opus 4.6, working through Ghidra, decoded and documented the GeneralPlus A1800 codec from a Windows DLL and reimplemented it in Rust.
Credits
- Reddit poster Hedgebull Source ↗
- Repository account bethington Source ↗
Earliest dated source:
The full story
People trying to reverse engineer the story books for the Little Tikes Story Dream Machine were stuck on the audio format, which turned out to be the GeneralPlus (SunPlus) A1800 codec, also used in 2012-2016 Furbys and many LeapFrog toys. Existing tools worked by calling into a 32-bit Windows DLL from Python.
The maker loaded A1800.DLL into Ghidra, fixed up the entry point signatures and asked Claude Opus 4.6, through a Ghidra MCP server, to reverse engineer the decoder, document the codec as it went and reimplement it in Rust. They said they were "shocked at how well it did", including recognising which techniques and algorithms the codec uses.
How it was done
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Sources
From a short post by the maker, so the details are as they tell them.
- Reddit: Vintage audio codec reverse engineering with ClaudeReddit poster: HedgebullPosted
The maker's post on r/ClaudeAI.
If it disappears: archived copy of Reddit: Vintage audio codec reverse engineering with Claude (opens in a new tab)
- The code: github.comRepository account: bethington
Linked in the post.