> -----Original Message-----
> From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu 
> [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu]On Behalf Of Gerhard Fiedler
> Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2006 8:03 AM
> Olin Lathrop wrote:
>
> In the end, I usually use a combination of initial test with the simulator,
>
>For what do you guys use the simulator? The only time I used it was when I
>tried to get familiar with the PIC architecture. That's a while ago now.
>Since then, I never looked back at it... it doesn't seem to be able to do
>me any good. As a consequence, of course, I'm not at all familiar with it,
>and may miss out on something :)

Me too. I just starts to learn to use the simulator after knowing PIC16
for years. Still I start to think it might be quite useful for me
now I am learning PIC18 and dsPICs.

>For me, it works like this: I do simulate, but only hardware; unusual
>constructs or when I'm not sure where the limits are. For the PIC itself,
>the simple framework that sets up all the basic functions usually is done
>quickly. (C, and past projects help here.) 

I also only do circuits simulation until now (mainly power supply and
analog amplifier circuits). That is really necessary. After this, I
will normally try out hard-wired board. For firmware debugging I
also have a simplified hardware prototype (eg: to use LEDs to simulate
output like relay). Still my projects are in general not very
complicated (never passed 2k for work-related projects). Often
I will need the help of a hardware debugger/emulator like ICD2
or ICE2000. 

>Never before used peripherals I
>often get to work by thoroughly reading the manual, or they don't work well
>with the simulator anyway (like the CAN bus interface) and may need some
>real-world experimenting. After that, almost all the problems that pop up
>have to do with interactions with the process environment, which is usually
>not easy to simulate with MPLAB. Something like Proteus may help here, but
>by the time you have successfully simulated your circuit and the process
>environment, you probably have developed the product without the simulation
>:)  (And note that I'm a fan of process simulation. I even studied it in
>university. It's a lot of fun, but it's also a lot of work :)

I think there are some limitations for MPSIM and gpsim but both
are getting better. I start to see people are doing interesting
things with MPSIM in Microchip Forum with MPLAB 7.x. I think
there are quite some gpsim users as well. On top of gpsim,
Ktechlab seems quite interesting as well but it is only under Linux.

>So I kind of never found the right place for MPLAB-style firmware
>simulation. Where is it?
>
>One thing that just came to my mind is test and optimization of special bit
>wiggling routines that work in the microseconds and have critical timing.
>That's probably something the simulator does quite well -- it's just
>something I don't do that often.
>

I am not so familiar with MPSIM/gpsim, but I think there are many possible
use of the simulators. I wasted a lot of time developing an asynchronous
pulse detection firmware for my last work related project. It is not
that complicated but rather timing critical. I think maybe simulator can 
help me. I guess we need experts like Olin and Scott and some others to 
enlighten us.

I think simulators can help both new beginners and more experienced users.
It is a pity that both MPSIM and gpsim do not have very good
documentations and there are not many good tutorials out there.

Regards,
Xiaofan

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