williams@kirk.dec.com.UUCP (02/20/87)
Michtron has two debuggers available, which I naturally had to try out, KISSED and RAID. KISSED is a relocatable debugger loaded with options. RAID is a symbolic debugger loaded with options. The bad part: KISSED will load a program, but it unfortunately just sets the user stack at 78000. This means that argc and argv are not only lost, but your program crashes when it tries to pop nonexistent arguments off the stack. RAID preserves the user stack through a command called exec. Unfortunately, The step commands don't do any context switching, the break points exit without restoring the PC or the SP's, and the ring detect break exits without restoring any registers. It occurs to me that these debuggers are useless. They both lose the context when in normal use. When I say lose, I mean really lost. I would not recommend these programs to anyone. I am going to be talking with MichTron in the near future to see what the story is. I'm sick of this trial and error bullshit when I have to shell out 40 bucks a whack for useless crap. Here are the minimum requirements for a debugger: 1) Examine/Deposit 2) Start/Stop in context 3) Load programs in context 4) Breakpoints Without proper context isolation the debugger is useless. All the other crap is nice, but not required. I can just as easily follow along with my trusty link maps. I am going to try demanding a fix and a free upgrade. This is not a case where the program does not have certain nice features, it is a case where the program simply does not work. I defy MichTron to show me any real program that they can stop and restart, with or without fiddling around with registers first. John.