Hi Don,

[Trying to catch you before you close down for holiday].

I went to your site and looked at your SimmStik, DT106, and DT001
pages. (there is so much on the pages!). There are a couple
of different aspects here.

1. It looks like my existing PIC Monitor/40 chip (based on the
16C74) could directly plug into your DT106 SimmStik, which would
then be plugged into the target system, and used to test the target
h.w. prior to people having written/finished their own firmware
(which would eventually go on the DT106). This is a direct match
I think.

2. Jim and I were discussing a programmer/development system that
also has built-in multi-functional test/stimulation capability,
so you can more or less do it all with one place. Jim would also
like it to have debugger/monitor/ICD capability, based around the
'87x, so you can also debug your code in-place.

I think Jim and I have slightly different visions. I think he
sees a system with basically 1 chip that could accomplish all
the jobs (I may be wrong here), while I saw 2 chips on the board,
one to be programmed/debugged, and a separate test/stimulator
chip, similar to my current PIC Monitor chip. This 2nd chip
would be used to test both external h.w. (ie, the target system
for the chip being programmed), and also to stimulate/test the
chip just programmed while it is still in-place.

3. When Rob Severson brought SimmStiks into this, I think he meant
also including a SimmStik programming socket on the unit of item 2),
but I thought this might be poaching on your turf (????). Plus, it
might be getting off track from the original concept.

At any rate, item 1) looks like a match.

- Dan Michaels
Oricom Technologies
http://www.sni.net/~oricom
========================

At 08:50 PM 2/19/00 +1100, you wrote:
....
>I would think all you would need to do is put one of your monitor chips
>in the appropriate SimmStick micro board, and you could exercise the I/O
>functions of the circuit under test. The SimmStick mother board will
>take care of power and RS-232, unless of course these features are
>installed on the SimmStick target board, which can be done on the DT106
>board.
>
....

>Don McKenzie    mailto:don@dontronics.com      http://www.dontronics.com
>
>World's Largest Range of Atmel/AVR and  PICmicro Hardware and  Software.
>Free Basic Compiler and Programmer http://www.dontronics.com/runavr.html