I’m recently dealing again with S19 (S-Record) files. I can easily generate S19 files from my ARM .elf files, but what I need is a simple decoder of the file format.

The good thing is: such a decoder is provided with CodeWarrior for MCU10.x 🙂

That capability is built into the Decoder.exe which is delivered with the Freescale S08 (or S12) tool chain, and is located inside the MCU\prog folder:

Decoder.exe inside MCU prog Folder

That Decoder is usually used to disassemble Freescale S08 object or absolute files. But as S19/S-Records files are very generic, that decoder can even decode ARM Cortex S-Record files: it just cannot understand the assembly code, but this does not matter for my use case.

The decoder comes with a command line interface. But I can use it with a GUI (Graphical User Interface) if I launch it without any arguments (or start it from the Windows Explorer):

Decoder Application Window

The simplest way to decode files is: simply drag&drop the file into that window 🙂

Drag and Drop of S19 file into decoder

This creates the .lst listing which I can open in a text editor:

Decoded S19 File

Now I can easily inspect each S-Record line with type, length, address, data and checksum 🙂

Happy Decoding 🙂