Microchip donated an ICD 3 and an Explorer16 to the Open 7400 Competition. Get your entry in and this and other cool hardware can be yours.
MPLAB® ICD 3 In-Circuit Debugger System is Microchip’s most cost effective high-speed hardware debugger/programmer for Microchip Flash Digital Signal Controller (DSC) and microcontroller (MCU) devices.
The Explorer 16 is a low cost, efficient development board to evaluate the features and performance of Microchip’s new PIC24 Microcontroller, the dsPIC33 Digital Signal Controller (DSC) families, and the new 32-bit PIC32MX devices.
Thank you to Microchip for sponsoring the 2012 Open 7400 Logic Competition!
Whoo, nice prize! I could have user for one of these. I’m currently just using a Pickit3 so a proper hardware debugger would hit the spot :-)
The P/N DV164035 MPLAB ICD 3 In-Circuit Debugger costs a whopping $189.99 USD plus $9.99 USD for the P/N AC164113 ICD 3 Test Interface Module (shown in the picture); so $199.98 total (what brilliant Marketing Goon came up with that pricing scheme?)
IMHO This is a serious barrier to entry for those wanting to use Microchip components.
Of-course, a lucky winner of the 7400 contest won’t have to stand for Microchip attaching a vacuum cleaner to his/her wallet.
Well, the Pickit3 is actually not a pile of dog poo and is quite capable of handling the flashing and debugging tasks needed for your everyday (hobby/small business) development.
A genuine Pickit3 is only $45 and you can get a perfectly fine clone for $30 shipped.
I’m rather happy with my Pickit3 for Microchip -based development and my AVR Dragon for flashing and debugging AVR processors. But of course I’d like to ramp up my tools to a real IDC3 and an AvrOne! but I do just fine without them…. :-)
> Well, the Pickit3 is actually not a pile of dog poo
Not since they turned it back into a PICkit2 :-)
I don’t think you can do the same level of in-circuit-debugging with the PicKit3 like with the ICD 3. Boy I’ve read an awful lot of complaints about the PicKit3, especially when it first came out.