PC ICE or debugger?

Hi all,

Years ago I used ICE Systems (In Circuit Emulators) for a few different CPU's these were great, at any point press the button and bang, the CPU stops dead in its tracks, really nice to use. Time has passed and things move on, but I loved this type of device and was thinking "I wonder if they make one for a PC", I had a quick look around but there does not appear to be anything (well not that looks like what I used anyway)

Do ICE exist for PC's (Intel / AMD) or has it all changed to something else? all I am looking for is a hardware based debugger that stops CPU 100% of time.

Thanks

Steve

I imagine a hardware debugger for Intel/AMD would be expensive. I don't know of any. I think this sort of debugging on PC platforms is done with software debuggers. The Intel/AMD chips do have debug registers, but I haven't kept up with the details.

Back in the 486 days I used a debugger called Soft-ICE. It was great. You could debug any program. Just hit Control-D and the proc was stopped and the debugger popped up. I haven't done debugging at that level for a long time, so I can't suggest anything current. I think Soft-ICE has been discontinued, which is too bad.

Hi Toe Cutter,

Yes I remember Soft-Ice so does anyone else have any suggestions for a low-level debugger?

Steve

There is no one PC ICE because there are many chips in PCs. As Tom said you would not like the price. As far as i know the few being produced are used by the chip makers and the people who make mother boards. They are very labor intensive to engineer and few are sold which makes the price rather shall we say astounding.

If you install Microsoft C++ you can debug any program ( If you are any good at assembly programming ). The only trouble with MS is that ANY program halts for any reason their debugger kicks in.