NoIce
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
NoICE is a low cost commercially available debugger that has been ported to a wide variety of microprocessors: 68HC12, HCS12, 68HC08, MSP430, 8051 and derivatives, Z80, Z180, 68HC11, 6502, 65C02, 6809, 8096, 80196, 8080 and 8085.
The debugger is of general interest to embedded programmers because the least expensive version, running on PC DOS, sells for US$ 30.00. Versions that run on MS Windows usually cost only a few hundred dollars. This is cheap for embedded debugging systems, which often cost thousands of dollars.
The debugger is compatible with many public domain and low cost compilers such as SDCC (see link below). This is also unusual, and of general interest. Many commercial debugging systems only support one or a few compilers, and those tend to be those most widely used by business and industry, rather than those that are least expensive.
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[edit] Technical Details
NoICE always supports remote debugging, in which a piece of code communicates to the debugger on the PC via RS232. In a few cases, where traditional, the author has also added support for a CPU simulator. In many cases, NoICE also supports a chip's native debugger interface, if the chip has one. Many modern microcontrollers use flash memory for program codes, and the NoICE debugger system often supports the flash memory of those microprocessors as well.
As with most embedded debuggers, the debugger only really supports the C programming language.
[edit] History
According to its web site, NoICE got started when its author needed it, and wrote it. Once he had it, he decided it was too good to die, so he made it available at a cost that would pay for his time. Later, he ported it to Windows.
[edit] Links
[edit] External links
- NoICE Debugger- A commercial site providing downloads and information
- SDCC, a free compiler supported by NoICE
