Been using an ICD for some development work on a project, and although I
have been able to make it work I've had a few problems:
1) Noise.  The ICD seems to generate a huge amount of noise, swamping some
small analoguge signals on our board whenever it's connected.  I suspect
this is due the the charge pump on board the ICD.

2) MPLAB is flaky!  Yeah, I guess everyone knows that.  But, if I have to
disconnect the ICD cable during a debug session for whatever reason, then
after clicking on umpteen dialogue boxes telling me that ICD Comms has
failed, if I click on the re-connect button MPLAB either hangs or crashes
with an illegal operation.  If I use the ICD purely as a programmer, the
reconnect button works fine.  This is under Win 95.

3) SLOW! We are using a 16F877 part which is over half full.  I have checked
the "Erase before programming" but it still gives me time to walk to the
coffee machine, and back before it's finished ( getting through way too much
coffee at the moment!). Is the Advanced Transdata parallel port device any
better in this respect?  (Having thoughts of buying one and "borrowing" the
Microchip one for home).

Any advice on this would be appreciated as I find the debugger very handy to
use compared to the emulator with it's huge pod balanced on a delicate SMT
socket on our board.  Also any good SMT sockets(with a matching plug) that
anyone has used for ICD connection: requirements are 1) small as possible,
2) low profile, 3) 6 way (actually 5 way would be fine).

Regards

Mike

--
http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us!
use mailto:listserv@mitvma.mit.edu?body=SET%20PICList%20DIGEST