AVR Freaks

Thanks for the responses.   Do you use Windows 10 or Windows 7.  I see problems with both, but they may be different.

 

@nvl1109 No, I haven't seen that.

 

First of all, I don't believe Studio ever wanted to update the firmware.   Is that normal?

 

I just took a look with AS Device Programming.  It says Firmware Version 1.16, Hardware Version 0.

 

Version 0.  Maybe this explains why they were selling them for $80 to clueless suckers.   Apparently they aren't smart enough to employ the old trick of calling the first ones version 3. 

 

One of the things I noticed when I was using Win7, and maybe Win10, was that breakpoints would get stuck.  The software would continue to stop at the same spot even when I got rid of the breakpoint.

 

 

Yeah, I could do that and it would probably work.  I need to use 6_2 though until AS7 gets fixed, and if this thing gets stuck updating or downdating,  I'd be worse off.  There may be a button I can push to force an update attempt but I don't know where to look.

 

Maybe someone using 6.2 could see what they have.  It's Tools > Device Programming > Apply > Tool information.

 

 

I've done some testing today.  I see at least one problem when running on Win7, but so far it is not a show stopper.  I get a phantom breakpoint.  I set 3 breakpoints I'll call a b and c.  They worked.  I removed all three and that worked too.  No more breakpoints.  Then I re-added  breakpoint b and that causes the program to stop where breakpoint a had been set.  If I remove breakpoint b, that removes the now phantom breakpoint a.

 

Things were much worse when using Windows 10.  I saw the same inexplicable things I saw yesterday.  I'm serious when I say I can't explain what I see without resorting to the supernatural.  When the chip goes wacky, breakpoints no longer work so all I can do is speculate what the heck is happening.  The chip still works in some ways and in other ways does things that are too bizarre for words.

 

 

Thanks for the info Jim.  I didn't see your post while I was working on my previous post. 

 

I see you have a later firmware than I have.  I guess I'll do the AS7 and then AS6 trick.

 

My Studio on this Win7 machine is older than yours (SP1).  I do have SP2 laying around here and I think that's what I'm running on my Win10 installation.

 

I'll try updating stuff tomorrow.

I updated 6.2 to SP2 on Win7 so it is like yours.  6.2 on Win10 was already SP2.

 

I plugged the ICE into AS7, which happens to be on a Win10 installation.  The firmware update went smoothly to version 1.26.

 

Then I plugged it into 6.2 SP2 and the firmware never downdated.  It's still 1.26.  It seems to be working the same or better than it did before the update.

 

It seems to work okay on Win7.  I think I can explain the phantom breakpoint. It's a minor but confusing glitch in the debugger which can easily be overcome.  I set a breakpoint in a function call.  The function being called was in another source file.  I placed a breakpoint at the beginning of the function.  They showed up as 2 breakpoints.  Each was shown in the breakpoint window.  I guess deep down in the hardware there was only one breakpoint but it was seen as 2.   When I removed both breakpoints, the code still stopped where the first one had been.  I fixed it by putting a breakpoint there and removing it. 

 

So the bottom line is, the Atmel Ice seems to be working okay on Win7.   Win10 is another story.  Using it on Win10 still causes my Xmega to be possessed by demons.  I'll try to tell you about the unexplainable bizarre behavior in another post.