----- Original Message ----- From: Pic Dude To: Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2002 8:16 AM Subject: Re: [PIC]: New guy... > .... However, the project I am working on is Linux-based, and I > will be writing a bunch of custom code in Linux, include SW to control a > hardware device on the parallel port.....all in Linux. > > With all that, it should be easier to develop my PIC code on the same > platform as I will be using for development of the rest of the project. > There are versions of ZMech for the PIC that run native on linux. They have built in XCASM (high level assembler) and XCSIM (simulator). There are X Windows and direct graphics console ports (SVGALIB and FBDEV) which give you a GUI interface to the visual programming interface of ZMech AND allow you to link your simulation to GUI mimics (build your own virtual hardware control console with switches, sliders, gages, LEDs etc to drive real hardware through your parallel and serial ports then hook this up to your simulator and get it to drive the simulated target instead). The assembler lets you embed simulation statements directly in your assembler source so you can do the equivalent of adding print statements to your source as you would in BASIC or C when debugging your code. You can embed instructions to validate values in variables at points in your code but without the overhead of using any code space. You can read/write values from and to files to the simulated target. You can even get your simulated target talking to external native linux processes (e.g. containing reference code) to feed it test data and varify your algorithms. BTW unlike MPLAB, XCSIM simulates systems consisting of multiple interacting MPUs running at different speeds. Have a look at http://www.xcprod.com/titan for more info. Don't forget to look at XEBOT. This is what you would use to build your virtual hardware console (visual basic style drag and drop). So why bother with dosemu, wine or vmware? Regards Sergio -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.