I received my ICEBREAKER kit few days back and finaly got round to building it last night. For anyone in the uk at least, this is a real bargain. 35UKP buys you a decent PCB, a pre-pregrammed 16F877, one of those small prototype boards which sticks onto the PCB, a 16x2 LCD display and a stepper motor and all components for the stepper driver etc. Even comes with serial cable for programming, and a bunch of single strand hookup wire to connect up the LCD/stepper/prototype board.
However, I had some problems trying to run the example programs. The LCD test program worked intermittantly, with garbage being displayed frequently. After taking a look at the source code I saw some instances of consecutive bit operations on a port, really pushing your luck doing this at 20MHz. Anyone else seen this?
The debugging software on Windows is..well....adequate. I wouldn't call it professional but it does the job. One point that had me for a while is that opening a HEX file will display the correct source code in a window and a breakpoint can be set etc. However, it dosen't download the program until you choose "Program" from a drop down menu. If you start single stepping with out realising this you get all sorts of bizzare behaviour such as comments in the source code apparently being executed!
There has definately been some cost cutting in the serial interface, no MAX232 etc.. driver is used, instead a bunch of zeners are used to clamp the RS232 swings to 5 volts. Not brilliant, but at least they didn't rely on the PIC's internal protection diodes for clamping. If a proper RS232 interface is important to you, there is enough prototype area to kludge one on. You would however have to deal with the inversion problem which would be tricky as the ICD software is not of the "open source" variety.
On the whole thoroughly recomended. The price is good for the hardware alone, the ICD is a bonus :o) If you want to order one, make sure the kit contains a copy of the contructional details, as mine didn't. They did send it the next day after I used the feedback form on the web site however.
Cheers
Mike Rigby-Jones