My father in-law is a hardware engineer, his company bought a really expensive machine, and it comes with a software. The software would take user's input and send it to the machine to run, and the result will be displayed back to the software.
Due to some reasons, his group need to make a minor fix to add a condition to the input or else the machine would become useless. eg, if the input is below 1500 units, send it to the machine, if input is larger than 1500 units, use a formula f(x) to calculate the units and send it to the machine.
They tried to contact Manufacture to make this fix but they refused. They have a tight deadline and they need a solution, thus my father in-law asked me if I can do anything about this. He provided me the installer of the software.
what my thoughts are: 1) using a decompiler. if I can get the source code, can I modify it and re-compile it? I have the installer, after install, is the .exe file and Date and Templates folder(which contains ReadMe_Date.txt and ReadMe_Template.txt inside is a string "use this folder to store Date/Template files)
2) play around the signal. intercept the signal send and received to and from the machine, write a brand new app that has similar UI and simulates the original software
3) write a wrapper. a wrapper on top of the software to pre-processes the input, then using some macro to send the input to the original software.
4) any other ways?
thanks in advance!