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Future of Microchip Development Tools? See inside...

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Atmel; Moto... uh, Freescale(!); 8051; ARM; Microchip.

I'm taking a short survey of Microchip users to help decide what future directions development tools should take. The survey is confidential - I don't even ask for your email address, O.K.?

It's only 11 questions that should take you less than a minute. Unless you really want to get opinionated ("Embedded Developers opinionated?!?? Nah!!!") in which case, go ahead, "comment" to your heart's content...!

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I'm basically trying to figure out whose development tools are completely reliable, and whose tools really suck. And it's your opportunity to say whatever you want to say - really!

Thanks for your support,

- Bill Giovino Executive Editor

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"Stamping out Bad Development Tools since 1995"

Reply to
Bill Giovino
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directions

for your

really want

case, go

reliable, and

say -

MPLab is fine, but the cost of the C compilers for their family of PIC and dsPIC processors is a consideration compared to ATMEL and GNU.

Regarding tools that suck, while Analog Devices Visual DSP++ is actually a pretty nice tool, the support of that tool really sucks. If you try to do anything atypically your own your own. They don't appear to have inhouse expertise on their own toolset.

Reply to
AntiSPAM_g9u5dd43

I started using Microchip's dsPIC on a project and abandoned it in favor of TI. The fact that I found the tools absolutely abysmal had a lot to do with my decision. The other factor was that for less money, I was able to get a much more powerfull TI processor.

The tools crashed constantly and irrecoverably even took my development project with it on one occasion

Reply to
Noway2

Using C or assembly?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

I worked with a friend on a project using the same processor (dspic

30F64 I think) . That project was a combination of C and Assembly. In addition to the tools effing up a lot, I remember how much of a pain it was trying to figure out how to define const variables in program memory and access them at rum time. It required the use of a program visibility window or something similar.

I didn't even get that far on my project before switching to TI. I was using the MPLAB and the visual configuration tool to plan out the desired pin assignments for the chip in preparation for PCB layout. By that point, I was displeased enough with Microchip that I didn't want to continue with using them any longer. I would have to say, that overall, I am as pleased with TI as I was displeased with Microchip.

Reply to
Noway2

See, there's the problem. You should never try to think about work during "rum" time. :-|

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. It's Friday.

Scott

Reply to
Not Really Me

I hear you there! I must have had "rum" on the brain then too!

Reply to
Noway2

You can program dsPIC using gcc. Somebody has ported the microchip changes over to linux. It would be nice to figure out how to use the microchip runtime monitor to drive GDB, but I haven't gotten around to that yet.

--
Regards,
  Bob Monsen

Music is the pleasure the human soul experiences from counting without 
being aware that it is counting.
- Gottfried Leibniz
Reply to
Bob Monsen

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