Scott Dattalo wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2000, Caisson wrote:
> > <Snip>
> > > If I may, Darrel, (since I don't work for microchip, I don't have to be
> > as
> > > nice - and I really despise complainers).

I see. So if a candy bar maker gives you a 'free' sample of their candy
at a grocery store, and the wrapper says, "Yummy carmel center" and you
eat
the candy bar and discover that there is -no- carmel in it, thats OK
with you?
No wonder software is so shoddy.

BG gets rich selling us toasters that toast bread on ONE side. He then
sells us an upgrade that toasts bread on both sides, but burns the first
side. He then sells us yet another upgrade the toasts both sides
correctly, but you can only put one slice in the two slice toaster at a
time. He now promises that Winblows 2000 will toast two slices of bread
at one time, correctly. Yeah, right....

I expect that a professional company that provides a development tool
that is
clearly intended to be used by professionals would ensure that that tool
works
as advertised. The lack of USART interrupt support in MPSIM is a clear
contradiction of the documentation which says "-all- interrupts..." are
supported.

The CCPx simulation failure cost me a great deal of time, needlessly.

I found another gotcha WRT PORTB bit change interrupt and the CLRW
instruction
inducing missed captures, but since that would be 'complaining' I'll let
you get bitten for yourselves.

> > > If you don't like MPSIM (specifically, or MPLAB in general), you have
> > many
> > > choices.
> > >
> > >  - You can go off and write your own simulator

I thought that the whole point of giving away their MPLAB package was to
encourage
people to buy their chips by reducing the cost of entry to nearly zero.
I can spend several hundred $ to get a commercial package which may have
bugs,
or I can try this -free- product, put out by the maker of the chip (who
should know
in great detail how his chip works so his simulator should be the best)
and expect
a -lower- level of bugs (given Microchip's intimate knowledge of their
chip).

> > >  - You can join the gnupic project and help with gpsim
> > >  - You can fork out $$ for umps

Does it support USART interrupts? Does it simulate PWM/CCP correctly?
Does it correctly simulate PORTB capture register behavior (and the
'feature'
I found because of the RISC architecture).

> > >  - You can buy an emulator from one of several different sources

And then I'd be out of pocket and STILL have buggy/incomplete software
and poor
support? No thanks. At least I know what level of support I'm getting
with MPLAB.

And the final option is that we complain to Microchip about the
'undocumented features' and ask them to fix them. If -more- people
complained directly about the various problems in MPLAB/MPSIM the errors
are more likely to be fixed than if nothing is said. If we don't
complain then nothing is done because the authors won't know about the
problems.

And a number of my comments were suggestions for improvement (or so I
thought).

MPLAB/MPSIM is a very well implemented package, but it still has a few
'errors' that
need correcting.

Are you listening Microchip?

Robert.Rolf@UALberta.ca