aland@infmx.UUCP (Dr. Scump) (09/12/89)
Here is a summary of the email responses I received in reply to my
question about PC hardware debuggers...
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From: John Lefor <ames!rochester!ur-valhalla!jal>
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 89 10:29:54 EDT
Subject: Re: Atron 386 Probe and Periscope 4: Info requested
Organization: University of Rochester Department of Electrical Engineering
I do not have, nor have I used either of the specific products you
requested. But I do have and use an Atron '286 probe and a Periscope
3 board.
For me, the Periscope product is a superior product. The user
interface is excellent and easy to use. The fellow who designed and
supports Periscope is a friend of mine and I respect his work and
products. He is a real programmer and knows the things programmers use.
Best of all his Periscope product comes in several flavors suitable
for several pocketbooks.
The Atron product is pricey. The user interface is OK. It offers
the ability to write debugging macros (which Periscope doesn't really
offer - though you can write user exit routines). I tried to get
Atron to support protected mode products (which they sell) but found the
support sorely lacking. The docs were wrong, and the support staff
did not know how to listen to the questions, much less answer them.
In short - I am a friend of the fellow who owns Periscope. I
think the Periscope family of products are great. There are a few
reasons I would prefer an Atron Probe over Periscope but they are
not user-interface or ability to support a product. For the
money I would always prefer Periscope. If I had a particularly
difficult problem where macro debugging or external keyboards were
critical I would prefer Atron.
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Date: Tue, 15 Aug 89 07:49:16 mdt
From: Jon Rodin <hplabs!hpcndaw!jar>
Subject: Re: Atron 386 Probe and Periscope 4: Info requested
Alan,
I have used several versions of Periscope (including 4) and older versions of
Atron (not Atron 386), as well as SoftIce (a software debugger which uses the
debug registers of the 80386, but no hardware). I recently purchased Periscope
4 and several copies of softice when I switched jobs. At my last job, we had
several copies of the (older) Atron Probe and one copy of Periscope 3. When a
decision was made to acquire a debugger for each development engineer, we got
all periscopes. The atrons were not used anymore. There were several reasons
for this.
1) The periscope can be used in machines with different cpus (peri
3 can go in 8088/80286s and peri 4 can go in 286/386/486), the atron is cpu
specific, you need one for each type of machine.
2) The periscope product and the atron product have roughly the same
capabilities. However periscope is a lot more user friendly, in ease of use
and installation.
3) And, oh yeah, incidentally, Atron 386 costs 1/2 again what peri 4 does
(about $4500 vs $3000). Noone said these puppies are cheap.
However, if you are writing real-time software (interrupt driven etc) you
probably need one of these. $3000 is not much considering wages paid to
software engineers.
If you are just running on 386 or 486 processors and you are only developing
for DOS, you can probably use soft-ice. Soft-ice is not quite as powerful
as a hardware assisted debugger, however you get 90% of the debugging features
for far less money. I think soft-ice runs about $350-$400. I use soft-ice
all the time and only switch to periscope if I am running on a 286 or need
a feature which softice doesn't support well (like trace history).
I hope you find this info useful. Feel free to ask any other questions.
Jon Rodin
jar%hpcndpc@hplabs.hp.com
PS I use symdeb all the time too :-)
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From pyramid!cdp!jeff Thu Aug 17 02:14:10 1989
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 89 21:38:16 -0700
Subject: Re: Atron 386 Probe and Periscope 4: In
You might want to get a copy of the January 1989 PC Tech Journal.
They had an article on Atron and Periscope (but III, not IV).
You also might want to consider some of the debugging tools which
run on the 386. They are capable of provide support that was
previously available only in hardware. One company that's been
advertising a lot (Dr. Dobbs Journal is a good place to look for
these kinds of ads) is Nu-Mega Technologies (in Nashua, NH).
If you are stuck on a 286 and are on a tight budget (I know this
seems silly, but I had one contract where they were willing to
pay me but not pay for the best tools), one of the more unique
and interesting tools available (assuming you already have
CodeView or Turbo Debugger) is the Quaid Analyzer (from
Quaid Software in Toronto).
Good luck!
Jeff Dean
415/852-1225
uunet!pyramid!cdp!jeff
dean@decwrl.pa.dec.com
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--
Alan S. Denney @ Informix Software, Inc.
{pyramid|uunet}!infmx!aland "I want to live!
-------------------------------------------- as an honest man,
Disclaimer: These opinions are mine alone. to get all I deserve
If I am caught or killed, the secretary and to give all I can."
will disavow any knowledge of my actions. - S. Vega