AVR-Chat

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David VanHorn <microbrix@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 6:47 PM
Subject: Re: [avr-chat] JTAG Debug
To: "Weddington, Eric" <eweddington@cso.atmel.com>


> I'm sorry you seem to had such problems with the tools. There are many other people who have never run across such difficulties, or at least had got their issues resolved.


Yes, I know.  There are those of us who have given up with them, and
those of us that they work well for.
It's been that way since roughly early 2002.  I don't know why.
Obviously many different computers, ices, installations of W98 and XP
pro, target systems, chips, date codes, etc etc etc,

I used the ICE-50 and ICE-100 and had NO problems with them, right up
to the release that was the ICE-50's "unveiling" in Germany, which had
the amusing bug of flipping two of the middle bits on the ADC results.
(which caused rather amusing results in my high speed thermal printers
printhead management routines)  After that, the ICE-50's utility went
straight downhill, at least for me, Glen Bankston, and several others
at that time.

I presented that last one I mentioned with R16 not changing as
desired, in excruciating detail to the support team, and never got any
resolution at all.
I even sent movies of the screen capture so they could follow the
entire process.

I'd be happy to work with the AVRs again, but I can't sit and waste
days and days fighting the tools. The tools are supposed to make me
MORE productive, not less.

I brought these problems up in a discussion with Sarah Cox of Priio,
which was caused by my AVRISP refusing to program a perfectly good
target. I took the target system over to PRIIO, and was able to load
the code first time with their CableAVR, and still the AVRISP refused.
 I had three different AVRISPs, and none would work.  I'd hit that
before too, where the AVRISP would stop working, and then start
working again hours or days later for no apparent reason.   Anyway,
prompted by that little fiasco, which almost caused me to miss a
customer deadline, we were talking about the state of AVR Studio, and
she told me that they'd given up on it entirely.   This is Sarah Cox,
co author of Embedded C Programming And The Atmel AVR.

She told me that she cringed when she had to write the section on using Studio.

If you look back on here, you'll see years of history on this.

I love the AVR, hell I started this list back in '95 or so.. First at
Egroups, then on my own server, then back on Egroups before they
merged with yahoo.   Others on here have had similar problems.   I
wish I knew why some work well, and some dont.



-- 

"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of
altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their
views... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the
facts that needs altering." Doctor Who, Face of Evil