AVR-Chat

Just for laughs, I thought it would be interesting to actually log what 
happens in an actual day of debugging.
Here's yesterday's 12 hour session, debugging a M8 project, using the 
latest studio, and ICE-50, on a 2 ghz win-98 machine with 256m of ram.
I did not log how many issues happened in one event, for example if one or 
20 old breakpoints came back in one event, then that's still one event.


Old breakpoints come back: 8
This is where a breakpoint, or many breakpoints that I had previously 
cleared, come back on their own.
Double-clicking on the BP twice, usually clears the problem. Once 
apparently does nothing.

Tossed breakpoints: 5
This is where I set a breakpoint, did a build and run, and the breakpoint 
vanished.

Can't set breakpoints: 2
This is where, for unknown reasons, I am unable to set a breakpoint, by 
double-clicking on the source.
Sometimes F9 will work where the mouse won't, but frequently the only 
solution is to shut down studio, and reload.

Sticky breakpoints: 3
This is where I can't clear a breakpoint. Sometimes trying again will work, 
sometimes it takes a reload.

Won't run from F5: 4
Like above, sometimes F5 just dosen't GO. Selecting run from the toolbar 
usually works, but sometimes a reload is needed.

Skip over code: 1
This is where an F11 results in the pointer going anywhere below the next 
instruction. In this case, it went a couple pages past.

Ghostpoints: 2
These are a little different from old breakpoints back.. In this case, the 
emulator stops at a point where a BP used to be, but there is no BP shown.
Double-clicking on this point twice, usually clears the ghostpoint.

Run to cursor ignored: 1
This is where I hit "run to cursor", and end up way later, at a breakpoint.

Ignored Breakpoint: 1
This is where the emulator ran right past a breakpoint.

"Lost in space": 1
This one is tough to describe, because it's hard to believe it when it 
starts to happen.
Suddenly, really wild results, totally unpredictable execution, and the 
only cure is a reload.



Total anomalies: 28, for an average of less than 30 minutes use between 
problems.
Many of the problems necessitate a total shutdown and restart of studio.
Of course in each case, I am deep inside a problem, and have spent 
significant time setting up the conditions to test a routine, only to have 
my concentration trashed, or my session trashed.

Similar problems happen in simulation, so I don't think that the ICE is 
involved, at least not directly.
Also, we see similar problems on multiple computers, and all recent (last 
couple years) versions of studio.
I see the same problems on my laptop with a transmeta Crusoe 700 mhz 
processor, and my XP pro 2GHz system.