The only problem I have with the AVRs
emulation is that what the emulator sees from your circuit is not
necessarily what the production chip will see.
Scenix and (I think) the Micro Chip ICD avoid this.
I don't know their approach, but
certainly any emulation is not going to be identical to the production, or
else every production device would have to contain an emulator.
But that, my good friend, is EXACTLY what Scenix did! Every production SX
has the emulator circuitry embedded in it! It uses a serial interface to an
adapter (the SX-Key) that controls the production device from the inside to
implement single stepping, port pin reading, breakpoints, etc...
...and its pic code/speed compatible or can run with a pipeline at 50MIPS.
Comparable prices, lots of Virtual Peripheral source code for all the common
stuff that slower processors have to implement as external hardware like
high speed UARTs, MODEMs, IRDA, DTMF i/o, Caller ID, high speed IIC or SPI
master or slave, micro second timers, frequency detection on any frequency
from 100Hz to 13/1kHz that the SX can implement with only a few discrete
components.
Now before somebody yells at me for touting Scenix on the PIC list: They
only have 2 chips in production (1.5 port and 2.5 port, 5 port SX52 on the
way (I have one)), the IDE uses funky parallax mnemonics, and they are the
sole source.
Scenix is to MicroChip like Zilog was to Intel back in the 8080/Z80 days.
James Newton, webmaster http://get.to/techref
(hint: you can add your own private info to the techref)
mailto:jamesnewton@geocities.com
1-619-652-0593 phoneÊ