Upgrating to PBP3.1

[NickMu]

Hi Henrik,

I don’t know how to thank you. This is what I was looking for.
I’ve downloaded all listed applications only to make sure I have the right ones when someone confirms the best combination. I did not intend to install all of them. The older PBP is running on a different, older laptop and I keep it just in case I have an emergency before the new setup is ready.
Also, I wanted to make sure that I’m doing the install in the best recommended order and things will not get confused.
After reading your post I started seeing things much clearer (it doesn’t happen too often and it doesn’t last too long).
You are correct about my intent to use MCSPX and not MPLABX as my IDE so I will only be dealing with MPLABX 3.55 or 3.60. Add to that PBP3.1 and MCSPX and I should be good to go. Just waiting until my laptop will be ready.

Thank you again. I’ll be back with my report in a couple of days.

Nick

[HenrikOlsson]

I don’t know how to thank you.

Stick around, ask interesting questions and try to help others with answers to their questions when you can - that works for me :-)

/Henrik.

[richard]

just tried trial version in mplabx(3.55) while it does function its no improvement on previous offerings .

it still can't debug anything but byte vars [ and manually at that] . quite disappointing in my view

[Ioannis]

I can only congratulate you for reaching so far Richard. I never managed to write basic code and compile it in the, so complicated, MPLABX IDE. More to this, I face a pile of problems when trying to program chips with ICD3 or PICKIT3, through the MPLABX IPE environment.

Ioannis

[richard]

one of the issues with pk3 can be managed by the pk3 3.10 stand alone gui tool. getting the pk3 in the correct mode is half the battle.
the icd3 is usually no problem but don't expect it to power anything

[Ioannis]

This stand alone for PICKIT3 is not very trusty. It made me almost needing pills once, because it programmed pics with errors.

And is not supported anymore. I suppose is no use for new chips also.

As for the ICD3 I did not think of the power issues. I guess you are right. This is the problem. Expected to power at least some chips on-board.

But PICKIT3 was unable t power too.

Ioannis

[pedja089]

just tried trial version in mplabx(3.55) while it does function its no improvement on previous offerings .

it still can't debug anything but byte vars [ and manually at that] . quite disappointing in my view

There is way to way to debug bit, word and long variables...
Maybe this will help
http://www.picbasic.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=18520

[richard]

yes but its not very elegant , each and every time you do anything that can possibly alter memory allocation you need to
ensure the address of your target vars has not altered . it would be much better if it actually worked properly .

its not as if mplabx hasn't been around for several years

[pedja089]

I agree, but some versions after 2.32 didn't work with PBP, so I give up from updating, and settle with what I have.
It would be great to have that, and RAM usage working...

[HenrikOlsson]

Hi,
I just installed the PBP3.1 update and gave the MPLABX integration yet another go. Following Charles video and additional instructions posted here was easy enough to get it "installed" but that's pretty much where the enthusiasm died.

(I've only tried the simulator so far, in case that matters).

As previously pointed out, can't "watch" word variables. Everything defaults to "unsigned char" and I can't seem to change it.
Can't seem to set line breakpoints.
Can only set data breakpoints by knowing the absolute address (and only bytes, again).
No RAM gauge.
No syntax highlighting.
No code folding.

It's a TINY step forward me, but like Richard, I must say I'm really quite disappointed. Guess I'm stuck with MCSPX, it hasn't crashed on me since switching to Windows 10 but I haven't been doing much coding - and of course it does hardware debug even worse than MPLABX, ie not at all.

/Henrik.