On Sun, 2006-12-24 at 11:17 -0500, Olin Lathrop wrote:
> The only nit I have is about the wall wart.  I thought the ICD2 requires a
> 9V regulated wall wart, although I could be wrong.  At least they ship with
> 9V regulated wall warts.  The USBProg is intended to be powered from USB.
> You can power it separately if using the serial interface, but the power
> needs to be 4.3 to 5.5 volts DC.  In other words 5V with a little wiggle
> room allowed.  Basically you need a regulated "5V" power supply.

The ICD2 can run from either USB power or wall wart (the walwart is NOT
regulated, it's just a 9V DC transformer). The limitation is if your
circuit is NOT self powered you need to use the walwart.

Since the ICD2 is meant for "In Circuit Debugging" (hence the name) I
almost always use it with self powered circuits. I've tried the
walwart/power supplied by the ICD2, and it works, but I rarely use it
that way.

> All in all I think this is a very fair and ballanced comparison.  Thanks,
> Wouter.

The fact though is your programmer is meant for completely different
purposes then the ICD2 IMHO. The ICD2 is really optimized for in circuit
debugging. As such, it has alot of limitations if you want to use it as
a standalone programmer, which makes sense since that's not it's primary
purpose.

Personally, I don't feel comparing the ICD2 to your programmer (or other
standalone programmers) is very fair to either side. They are really
apples and oranges. Anyone with an ICD2 should IMHO have a dedicated
standalone programmer (either your programmer or any of the others). The
limitations the ICD2 has when standalone programming really do get in
the way sometimes.

The funny thing is, despite it's limitations, I really do miss the ICD2
when I use other MCU families. I'm currently working on a project using
a different MCU and although the tools are pretty decent, it does take
more work to figure out what is wrong when you don't have ICD debugging
available.

TTYL

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist