[sdiy] dsPIC

[Seb Francis]

Eric Brombaugh wrote:
> 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.
>

Which Olimex model did you have Eric?  I use the "PIC-ICD2" model (the 
one with both USB and RS232 interfaces) and have found it very reliable 
and fully compatible with flash updates from MPLAB.

I haven't yet tried it with any 3.3V dsPICs, but from the Olimex website 
it looks like it should be ok (says 2.0 to 6.0 range).  They do state 
that their PIC-ICD2-TINY model is not ok with newer PICs that require 
<12.5V for Vpp.

Seb