On Fri, 2006-05-12 at 20:08 +0200, Stef Mientki wrote:
> I'm not familiar with ICD debugging,
> and can't find this information on Microchip's site.
> 
> To me the ICD debugging technique looks almost identical to so called 
> serial debugging.
> As most of my designs already have a serial RS232 (or USB) connection,
> I think it would be as good as ICD,
> or even better, because you don't spoil any extra pins.

I'm not sure what you mean by "serial debugging", are you using a tool
that accessing something running in the PIC over serial? Or are you just
talking about "printf" type debugging?

> So what's the real advantage of ICD over RS232 ?

Lots, but offhand, to me, these are the biggies:

- single step code, with live updates
- view any FSR or memory location at any time
- breakpoints pretty much anywhere in the code
- when using an HLL all debugging happens at the HLL level, no need to
go down to the assembly listing

You give up some IO yes, but ever since getting the ICD2 I've NEVER gone
back.

TTYL

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