ICD & PBP && how to get it to work

[Bruce]

Those are icons for the MCS+ boot-loader. Loader Read, Verify, Erase, Information.

[jellis00]

Thanks to Darrel Taylor's response at techsupport assitant at meLabs, I have solved this mysterious problem. Let me explain, because this may be encountered by other users of the Micro Code Studio Plus (MCS+) ICD.

It turns out that the ICD model that came on my CD-ROM that delivered MCS+ to me was not correct for the 18F4550. Darrel had downloaded this .inc file from the Beta models and emailed it to me. When I replaced the ICD model I had for the 18F4550 with the one he sent I started seeing Variables Tab.
The icons I thought I was missing in the tool bar only show when using a boot loader, as explained by Bruce Rentron in above post.
Chasing down this problem took 3 days out of my time....no thanks to Mecanique's tech support who never responded to my emailed request for support.

[Bruce]

That was one of my suspicions, but I'm glad you got it sorted.

Post #15 above;

or maybe a bad ICD model file?

no thanks to Mecanique's tech support who never responded to my emailed request for support.

Bummer, but that does reinforce my little ending blurb in post #10 above...;o)

[HenrikOlsson]

It seems to be an on-off kind of thing. Or it depends on if it involves any sort of time-investment for them/him, I don't know.

When I had problems with MCS+ and Win7-64 I emailed them and got zero response but thanks to Darrel and Charles that problem too got sorted. A month or so later I emailed Mecanique again inquiring about a bootloader file I didn't have and got a response (and file) within hours.

/Henrik.