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Avocet Systems, Inc. : The Complete Solution for Embedded Systems Development Tools
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  • Proactive Debugging - Most of the time we debug by finding a symptom and then endlessly chasing that one problem. Why not set up traps for likely troubles, and let the hardware find these problems?
  • Single Stepping in ISRs - Single stepping in Interrupt Service Routines (ISRs) can cause all sorts of trouble. Here's our perspective on the matter.
  • 186 Reset Circuits -A processor's RESET input is surprisingly tricky to manage. If you're using a 186 processor - particularly one that is surface-mounted to the PC board - take a minute to read this over.
  • Prefetchers - Most modern CPUs (like the 80188, 68xxx, PIC and others) have prefetchers on-chip to increase peformance. They can cause no end of debugging trouble, though...
  • Hardware Breakpoints - Modern debugging tools offer a wide range of features, but all have some sort of breakpointing mechanism. Lots of vendors tout their reasons for saving a few bucks with software breakpoints... we wonder if it's really such a good idea.
  • Debugging with DDE -The DDE link in Windows gives you a powerful way to exert control over your debugging session. Here's how.
  • ICE Background Debugging - Some interrupt-intensive embedded applications cannot handle a breakpoint, since stopping the program's code causes interrupts or DMA to be suspended, creating havoc with the hardware.
  • Banking Z80 Systems - A lot of Z80 systems are still around, and are running out of address space. One alternative is to switch to Zilog's Z180, which has a 1 Mb address range. Another is to add banking to your Z80. Here's a way to debug if you select the second option.