dls@teddy.UUCP (Diana L. Syriac) (06/20/86)
I have a question for ns32k users and ns32k software suppliers. Is there a
DBX-like tool which works with the MON16 standalone monitor for ns32k products?
I had heard rumors that National Semiconductor was building one that would work
in this fashion, but don't know if the rumor is true or not.
What we have now is ns32k cross support software which runs on a vax. Included
in that package is a tool called dbg16, which is an assembly language symbolic
debugger that allows downloading programs to a ns32k board (running MON16
monitor), and debugging it in assembly language (including disassembling loaded
code). Although this is better than nothing, it's still not ideal, since
all of our code is written in C. It takes a lot of expertise (and listings)
to figure out which assembly lines go with which C lines. What we would
REALLY like is dbx (our vax runs on Ultrix , which is BSD 4.2 Unix).
Does anyone know of such a tool??
While we are on the subject of better debuggers, I've got a request about
dbg16. We have a method of copying down ns32k programs to our target, which
does NOT go across the 9600 baud port, so it's MUCH faster (orders of 10 or 100).
Dbg16 allows you NOT to load the program when you Begin, but unfortunately, it's
not smart enough to realize that it doesn't have to load down the symbol table,
so it still loads the symbol table over the 9600 baud port. This takes about
five minutes right now, with the size of our program. It only takes about 5
seconds to load the program, but takes 5 mintes to load the symbol table.
Does anyone know a way around this problem, either a way to make dbg16 use
an alternate port for loading symbols (our FAST method), or a way to prevent
dbg16 from loading them down entirely? We've already tryed changing the baud
rate of the 9600 baud port, but found that at a higher speed, dbg16 does not
work reliably.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thank you.
--
-> Diana L. Syriac, GenRad Inc, Production Test Division <-
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