Real Ice and PBP

[tumbleweed]

I have all of them, except for the new SNAP debugger.

The REALICE isn't a real ice, and for what it costs it's not worth the money. Mine mostly sits gathering dust.
For most chips you don't get any real benefits. IMHO, if you're looking for something more powerful than a PK2/PK3 then your best bet is the ICD3.

It's faster, can supply up to 150mA for the target VDD, has a stopwatch feature for timing code execution between two breakpoints, and works with both MPLAB and MPLABX. You could buy two of them for less than a REALICE.

The newer PK4/ICD4 would force you to use MPLABX, and for the K22 I'd stick with using MPLAB 8.92.

Debugging PBP code using the ICD tools isn't all that great anyway, so I wouldn't waste a lot of money on it.

[mpgmike]

I currently own a PICkit2 knock-off, PICkit3, and ME Labs U2 programmers. Because it was so cheap, I just ordered the new Snap (under $20 US including shipping!). The Snap is supposed to work on anything in the 8- and 16-bit PIC line, as well as AVR products. I doubt you got your PICkit2 for less than the price of the new Snap.

[tumbleweed]

The SNAP is on sale until the end of the month so you can get one right now for about $12 US (plus shipping)

You can't use it to power the target, it's LVP only, and you're stuck with MPLABX.
If you don't mind all those limitations it's an ok deal.

[towlerg]

@Dave Hi, where did you get that list of supported devices from? There a couple of updated (by non-Microchip) version of PK2DeviceFile.dat around but none that I know of as complete.

Your list includes 18K27K42 and 40, my personal holy grail, bugger I even bought a PicKit3 and had to use IPE - still smarting from that one.

[tumbleweed]

Dave - do you have the DAT file that goes with that list?

[Dave]

Tumbleweed, Here is the dat file I have used in the past. Just rename the extention to ".DAT" I no longer use my 2 PK2's or mt PK3 as I now use my PicKit4. I just wish MicroChip would update the software for the PicKit4 so I can use the "Program To Go" function. I still rely on my ICD3 for the bench work. I have retired my ICD2.

[tumbleweed]

Thanks, Dave.
That's the file available as PK2DeviceFile-1.62.14.dat.

It doesn't match up with the devices in the file "8-bit+PICs LIST.txt" you posted... wouldn't happen to remember where you got that list from, would you?