Robert,

I make no secret of my "inside connections" to Microchip.  I post here from
my home account and from my Microchip mail address.

We made the decision some time ago not to try to simulate all of the
peripherals of the chip with MPLAB-SIM.  There are too many subtleties that
would just be misleading and we don't have the staff to even make the
attempt.  As a result, the simulator is an instruction based simulator.  It
does not have the resolution to be able to handle  the various peripherals
accurately.

The GNUPIC project, which I fully support has made strides toward some of
these goals  If it's mainly the simulator that your are interested in, the
code is mostly in a DLL, is object-oriented, and, if people wants to spend
the time on it, we could do a trial run to see what happens.  Might be fun.

Darrel

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Rolf" <Robert.Rolf@UALBERTA.CA>
To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Sent: Monday, 06 March, 2000 11:48 PM
Subject: Re: PIC18CXXX Assembler? & MPSIM


> Darrel Johansen wrote:
> > The 18Cxxx assembler is in the "dot" release of MPLAB on the Microchip
web
> > page (currently v4.99.07).  The linker and simulator also support the
chips,
> > and header files and linker scripts are included with MPLAB.  MPLAB
v5.00
> > will be posted soon (this week) and all current tools will support the
> > 18Cxxx devices.  MPLAB-ICE support is in beta and will be fully released
in
> > v5.10.
> >
> > Darrel Johansen
>
> So Darrel, since you seem to have some inside connections, when
> might we expect to see some support for the devices -already in-
> the _existing_ chips?? Simple things like the USART, MSSP, etc. still
> don't have working support in MPSIM. It can't be -that- hard to simulate
> USART interrupts (a common use of the USART).
>
> As Microchip adds all these nice new chips to their product line it sure
> would be helpful to be able to debug code before the silicon comes out.
>
> Has Microchip considered releasing the source to MPLAB under terms
> similar to the GNU public license? I'm sure that many of us would
> be quite happy to 'fix' the broken bits that they obviously don't
> have time to work on.
>
> Robert.Rolf-at-UAlberta.ca
>