Anybody got real experience with in circuit emulators?

[jayco242]

Hi,
   been looking at in circuit emulators on ebay. Thought I might get one for the 68k project i have got. There seems to be lots of bits for sale but not many complete units and none of them have any software. The most complete ones seem to be HP 64700 units but chip specific cards seem to be rare. Applied microsystems have a lot of targets but not many base systems. Lauterbach appears to be still in business but Im not dropping $$$ on a low priority project.

   What I want to know is it worth getting any of these or is there something better/easier?
Also why no software? Is it not needed or not required? Or is that handled in MS Visual studio or something?

Thanks
   Jason

[joeqsmith]

I designed my own ICE from the ground up once if that counts as "real experience".  I've also wrote my own BDM and JTAG software for specific tasks. 

I have a couple of really old systems from a long time back.  The oldest is a Pentica MIME that I added changed to support the fastest 6811's (8MHz).      I have an old HP BDM Ethernet system and a P&E printer port BDM system.   The other one for the 68K is a Microtek.   That system also supports Ethernet.   

As far as if they are worth getting, I really have no answer.  If I had to support some old project that required me to have one, sure but seems unlikely.   

I would imagine that manuals and disks are tossed in the garbage as they are normally not sitting with the machines when they are finally scrapped.  The ICE is normally just the debugger.  The software development tools would be separate and often not even from the same company.  For example, I used the Introl C compiler with the Pentica MIME for the 6811.   For the 68K, there's Microtek.   You could go with GCC as well.   

[danadak]

Todays micros typically have a JTAG/Logic debug interface on them
that essentially obsoletes ICE type solutions. I recommend you look
at USB type boards, that use a micro to talk to the target micro and run
the debug interface.

Many manufacturers offer low cost boards like this, Cypress PSOC just
one example. Here is a summary -

For me what stands out is -

1) Routability
2) Fast 12 bit SAR A/D and slow 20 bit DelSig
3) DFB (Digital Filter Block) that is dual channel, handle FIR or IIR filters, or DFB
can be used as a GP fast processor block, similar to RISC block
4) MSI logic elements GUI based and/or the UDB Verilog capability. Eg. the FPGA
like capability
5) Onboard Vref
6) IDAC, VDAC, OpAmps (up to 4), comparator, mixer, switch cap, analog mux....
7) LCD,  COM, UART, I2C, I2S, One Wire, SPI, Parallel, LIN, CAN, BLE, USB
9) Custom components capability, create with schematic capture or Verilog
10) DMA to offload processes like filters, COM, Display
11) ARM M0 (PSOC 4) or M3 (PSOC  5LP) or 8051 core(PSOC 3)
12) Extensive clock generation capabilities
13) All components supported by extensive prewritten APIs

https://www.element14.com/community/thread/23736/l/100-projects-in-100-days?displayFullThread=true

http://www.cypress.com/documentation/code-examples/psoc-345-code-examples

Great video library

Attached component list.  A component is an on chip HW resource.

Free GUI design tool with schematic capture, "Creator". Components have rich API library attached
to each component. Compilers free as well.

PSOC 4 is low end of family, consider 5LP parts as well. PSOC 4 also has arduino footprint boards (pioneer) as well

https://www.elektormagazine.com/labs/robot-build-with-cypress-psoc

http://www.cypress.com/products/32-bit-arm-cortex-m-psoc



Regards, Dana.