> I am looking for a good C / Asm / source level debugger for 12F675 (8 pin)
> and 16F877 PIC's.
>
> I looked around at the ICE and ICD from Microchip and ICEPIC 2 but could
not
> find much information about an integrated C/Asm environment with source
> level debugging. Having minimal interference with the device operation and
> resources and a real time trace memory is a plus.
>
> Any recommendation and suggestion will be greatly appreciated.

If this is for hobby use, I hear the in circuit debugger (ICD) is a
reasonable value.  It does require some pins and some program memory
locations.  If this for a commercial project where you can't afford to fart
around, you need the ICE-2000.  It is a true in circuit emulator that does
not use up any pins, program memory, etc.  You plug it into the circuit as
if it were the chip, and the other end connects to a parallel port.  The
parallel port part is a bit of a pain, but fortunately Microchip is coming
out with a new ICE that will be USB (finally!).  The new ICE will be
required for the dsPICs.  I don't think they are out yet, and I'm not sure
they are backward compatible with the older PICs.  All these systems are
properly integrated into MPLAB.  You can step thru code just like you would
with the simulator, except that the code is actually being executed on the
target system.  The ICE-2000 has a 32K instruction trace buffer with
reasonably decent triggering logic.  It also includes an 8 line logic
analyzer that samples once per instruction.

An ICE-2000 setup comes in three parts, the ICE, a processor module, and a
device adapter.  The ICE is common for all setups, and different
combinations of processor modules and device adapters are used to cover the
full line of PICs and most of the package types.  See the line card.  We
have two ICE-2000s here with lots of different processor modules and device
adapters.  I wouldn't consider doing PIC development without them.  The
setup for a single PIC is around $1,200, although the official street price
may be up to twice that.  Still, it doesn't take much wasted time to pay
that back.


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(978) 742-9014, http://www.embedinc.com

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