sac585@uxf.cso.uiuc.edu (05/13/89)
Before me is an ad for a '386 software debugger called Soft-ICE from Nu-Mega Technologies. It claims to offer "all the speed and power of a hardware- assisted debugger at a software price." Has anyone used this debugger? Care to comment on its usefulness? Are there any other debuggers which make special use of the '386?
johnm@spudge.UUCP (John Munsch) (05/18/89)
In article <46500046@uxf.cso.uiuc.edu> sac585@uxf.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > >Before me is an ad for a '386 software debugger called Soft-ICE from Nu-Mega >Technologies. It claims to offer "all the speed and power of a hardware- >assisted debugger at a software price." Has anyone used this debugger? >Care to comment on its usefulness? Are there any other debuggers which make >special use of the '386? It is a good debugger in that it makes use of the 386's special debugging features. Unfortunately, the version that I last saw had no way to load a symbol table or map file and that limited its usefullness too much for me to want to use it. It also had some problems coming up correctly when I attempted to bring it up under an EGA program that I was attempting to debug. The only feature that I saw that I really want in Turbo Debugger (the ONLY debugger to talk about) was the ability it had to dump the memory chain so that you could see what was where in memory. They recommend using it to generate interrupt 3's (debugger interrupts) for your current debugger (symdeb, codeview, etc.). In this capacity it might be a little better but I'm still not sold on it. Instead, I've found that Borland's Turbo Debugger is an excellent choice for me. It has the ability to debug remotely over a serial line, put itself entirely into extended memory, and use some of the 386's debugging features through the loading of a special device driver. You might consider looking at Borland's product first and see if it will do what you want. John Munsch
alpope@token.Sun.COM (Alan Pope) (05/19/89)
In article <46500046@uxf.cso.uiuc.edu>, sac585@uxf.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > > Before me is an ad for a '386 software debugger called Soft-ICE from Nu-Mega > Technologies. It claims to offer "all the speed and power of a hardware- > assisted debugger at a software price." Has anyone used this debugger? > Care to comment on its usefulness? Are there any other debuggers which make > special use of the '386? As long as you are doing real-mode software it is pretty good. You can set code trace points and it executes very fast. You can also set break points on read or write to memory addresses or ranges. If you have used CED then you are familiar with it's basic interface. If you use and like CodeView get Nu-Mega's Magic CodeView (or whatever they call it). It takes up almost no memory in your 640K application space. And, it's much cheaper than a regular ICE. Alan L. Pope alpope@sun.com
sac585@uxf.cso.uiuc.edu (05/21/89)
At the time I posted that note, I was unaware of Borland's Turbo Debugger - I now own a copy thanks to the strong recommendations from netland as well as good reviews in magazines. Turbo Debugger is truly an awesome product!