[sdiy] dsPIC

[Eric Brombaugh]

karl dalen wrote:
> Im looking into some ICDs for the dspic GP802, there are loads of demo packages from everyone, wich do you use? I rater do my own ISP, ICD
> but most seams to be based on a F877 as middle man, no real JTAG
> as on Cortex M3, PC P-port to JTAG + buffer and thats it, then go full blown debugg, dsPIC no? hassle much stress program to dsPIC get easily
> bored and sentence building goes banana in massage!!??!!
> 
> So, ideas? This pain in arse? No? Full debugg or only demo hello world? 
> http://se.farnell.com/microchip/dm330011/kit-starter-mplab-for-dspic/dp/1621788

I've been using the true-blue Microchip ICD2 (hey - kinda rhymes!) 
lately. I tried the Olimex ICD2 knockoff a few years ago, but switched 
when I found that it couldn't talk to the 3.3V dsPICs reliably. It was a 
few $$ cheaper, but somewhat 'raw'. I've got no idea what other sorts of 
low-end interfaces there are these days.

The main concern I'd have with non-Microchip programmer/debugger 
interfaces is that they might not work well with the MPLAB development 
environment. With a genuine ICD2 you can download code to flash as well 
as run/stop/single-step & examine internal registers. No idea if that's 
possible with other interfaces.

You've touched on a big difference there - unlike ARM, there really are 
not any alternatives for development tools in the MCHP world. Since they 
give the most of the software away though and the hardware is fairly 
reasonably priced it's not a huge disadvantage.

Eric