Micro Code Studio and Studio Plus

[MikeBZH]

Hello Everybody,

I have some elementary questions about Micro Code Studio an Micro Code Studio Plus.
Sorry about that but I cannot find clear answers.

1) What are the differences between both products ?
2) I think I have read somewhere that MCSPlus was coming with PBP3.x Gold. Did I dream ? Do I have to purchase it separatly ?
3) More technical. I understand that MCSPlus supports PICKIT 2 and PICKIT 3, but only for programming ? Correct ?
4) Does It mean that I need to have a USB cable coming from my PC to the PICKIT for programming and a RS line (may be thru a USB to RS bridge) for debugging, coming from my PC to a reserved RS port on the PIC to debug ?

Thank you for your help.

MikeBZH

[richard]

1) What are the differences between both products ?
$50 us, ic debugging for more chips ,mspx bundles easy hid and mcloader

2) I think I have read somewhere that MCSPlus was coming with PBP3.x Gold. Did I dream ? Do I have to purchase it separatly ?
dream ,but check web site for offers

3) More technical. I understand that MCSPlus supports PICKIT 2 and PICKIT 3, but only for programming ? Correct ?
either version can work with most programmers that have command line interfaces that includes pk2/pk3 but only for programming


4) Does It mean that I need to have a USB cable coming from my PC to the PICKIT for programming and a RS line (may be thru a USB to RS bridge) for debugging, coming from my PC to a reserved RS port on the PIC to debug ?
yes mcspx needs a rs232 port for debugging , I find most usb serial adapters are totally unreliable for debugging with mcspx and have given up
even trying , it was ok with an old pc that had a real serial port but ! . the code overheads made debugging impossible/impractical anyway

[MikeBZH]

Hi Richard,

A little bit frustrating !

I was not enthusiast about making a double connection from the PC to my prototype but if it does not work correctly I think I am going to choose the MPLAB X solution, despite its complexity.

Thank you for your advice
MikeBZH

[HenrikOlsson]

You have to realise that the "debugging" provided in MCSP is a software/firmware solution.
Between each of your PBP statements the debugger inserts code of its own to talk to the software running on the PC, it uses the (E)USART to do this. This works fine for some things, not at all for other things since it A) steals execution time away from YOUR code and B) takes up space in program memory (and probably some RAM) which you may or may not have to spare. Apart from trying it once I've never used it.

If the only "problem" for you is the double connection (programmer AND serial cable) to the PIC you could consider using a bootloader over the same serial line as the debugger.

Real source level debugging, at the hardware level, has very little impact on the execution and footprint of your actual code and uses the device programmer/debugger (and not a UART connection) but unfortunately MCSP does not support that and you have to resort to MPLAB / MPLABX where it IMHO is just BARELY usable. I've tried it and given up - multiple times - despite written instructions and videos. It seems MPLABX moves too fast for PBP to keep up (not surprising), I mean it IS possible to compile code but the language plugin (syntax highlighter and code folding) doesn't work, used RAM display doesn't work, you can't monitor anyting but BYTE size variables without running thru hoops and last time I tried it I couldn't even set a breakpoint in the code. That doesn't mean you can't - just that I wasn't capable of doing it.