Glenn Saunders writes:
> The most useful debugging tool mentioned by the classic programmers was
> the HP logic analyzers. These provided all sorts of frills. It's kinda
> over my head so I'd have a hard time explaining what they do, but anybody
> who is really hard-core in their programming could probably get a lot out
> of use out of these things. I believe they clipped onto the 6502 and they
> could actually disassemble code on the fly and monitor all the signals
> coming off the pins.
Ah, the joy of logic analyzers. One of my jobs at my last employment
(before Metrowerks) was to develop microcontroller code for pagers.
We uses big HP16550 logic analyzers... they cost anywhere from $2kK to
60K, depending on the features and memory. Basically, they record all
the logical states of the signals going to and from the chips on the
boards. Using these, you can tell exactly what the CPU is doing at
any point in time. Very useful, especially when you've got no OS and
no reliable code on a machine.
Figuring out the logic of a program from its logic trace was my
specialty... lots of fun bugs, like the program that wouldn't
initialize because the entry point was above 64K, but the hig address
pins were set for I/O and logically low after reset. Fun like that.
--
Benjamin L. Combee (combee@xxxxxxxxxxxx) <URL:http://yak.net/combee/>
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