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From: woof@psivax.UUCP (Hal Schloss)
Newsgroups: net.micro,net.arch,net.research
Subject: Re: Info wanted on In-circuit-emulators (ICE)
Message-ID: <713@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Sep-85 14:36:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: psivax.713
Posted: Sun Sep  8 14:36:13 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Sep-85 10:03:57 EDT
References: <321@sesame.UUCP> <59@intelca.UUCP> <3567@amdcad.UUCP>
Reply-To: woof@psivax.UUCP (Hal Schloss)
Distribution: net
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 38
Xref: watmath net.micro:11964 net.arch:1789 net.research:224
Summary: 

In article <3567@amdcad.UUCP> phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) writes:
>In article <59@intelca.UUCP> cem@intelca.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes:
>>If you really want a good ICE unit get an I^2ICE from Intel.
>
>Yes, get an I^2ICE from Intel if you want to spend many bucks ($40,000?
>For a floppy based system, I think.) and learn a new text editor (what 
>was the name of that brain damaged thing, credit or something) and a
>whole new operating system (isis, more powerful than a speeding CP/M,
>or is it the other way around?) Until recently, you had the delightful
>choice of ASM86, PL/M86, or Pascal. There may be a C now. Maybe.
>
I have had some experience with I^2ICE and believe I can speak with just a
little bit of unbiased authority :-) We did some research on the various
ICE's available for the 8086-80186-80286 family and it became obvious that the
best ICEs one can get are Intel's products. They do have knowledge and special
parts available to them, that give Intel a tremendous head start towards a good
product. On the other hand they tend to be expensive and don't fit really well
into our development environment that centers around our VAX 11/750 running
UNIX. If you want they will sell you a lot of equipment to talk to a VMS
machine. (feh!)

I do program in C and can use the results on the I^2ICE though. I use the
C cross compiler package for OASYS in Cambridge, Mass. It would seem that as
long as you can get an Intel compatible object file, you can use it on an
I^2ICE. In addition you can get (real soon now:-)) I^2ICE for an IBM PC, and
something called TRACE86 which looks like a cheaper I^2ICE. If I was buying
an I^2ICE again I might consider those two options very strongly. My biggest
objection to I^2ICE is the incredible amount of time it seems to take to
load code.

In conclusion while Intel ICE products are expensive and not incredibly
convient to use sometimes, they do the best job of emulating the chip and
giving one access to the internal workings of it.
-- 
		Hal Schloss
		(from the Software Lounge at) Pacesetter Systems Inc.
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