On Mon, Mar 08, 2010 at 03:41:17PM -0500, Jason Hsu wrote:
> I use a PICSTART Plus programmer and MPLAB version 8.43.  I don't use
> Windows anymore - I use antiX Linux M8.2 and WINE. 

That almost seems to be a semantics discussion. You don't use the Windows
OS but you do use the Windows software.

> I tried to use the
> open source tools (GPSIM, Piklab, etc.) but couldn't get everything I
> needed to work.

Like I said below, there seems to be quite a few infrastructure issues with
all of these large systems projects. While I can see the utility of having
a GUI, the cost of building these systems in terms of the tons of libraries
needed to support them is a bit offputting.

Personally I still work well with the Unix old school model of having a
collection of simple, specialized tools, and an infrastructure for putting
them together to build what you need. I'm perfectly happy with a CLI
edit/make cycle using only CLI tools.

The process of integrating and GUIfying large systems seems to be creating
an unstable environment. I tried to get GPSIM going on my Kubuntu 9.10 box,
but both the 0.22 version in the repository, and the downloaded/compiled
0.24 version crash on startup. There's a bug report indicating that an
updated gtk+extras library is the culprit.

My laptop running 9.04 has a working 0.22 gpsim. I found out over the
weekend though that the USART module for the 16F88 is buggy and that it
doesn't seem to properly read program memory. So right now I'm actually
doing my testing on real hardware.

But that's the way that systems seem to be going now. I'm still not sure
it's a good thing. I guess I'm still a part of the KISS generation.

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