[comp.sys.mac.programmer] Opinions on TMON Professional?

poorman@convex.com (Peter W. Poorman) (04/11/91)

I just got a flyer from ICOM offering to upgrade my TMON to TMON/Professional
for $100.

Does anyone out there have an opinion on this product?  Is it worth $100, or
am I better off putting the money towards Jasik's product (or something else?)

Thanks in advance!

-- Pete Poorman
   poorman@convex.com

torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan Torrie) (04/11/91)

poorman@convex.com (Peter W. Poorman) writes:

>I just got a flyer from ICOM offering to upgrade my TMON to TMON/Professional
>for $100.

>Does anyone out there have an opinion on this product?  Is it worth $100, or

  I'm interested too...  I've seen it advertised for the past three months
in ComputerWare catalogues, but it's been conspicuously absent each time 
I've trundled down to see if it's in-stock.
  Can somebody quote the "feature set" of TMON Professional vs The Debugger
vs TMON Classic?

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evan Torrie.  Stanford University, Class of 199?       torrie@cs.stanford.edu   
Fame, fame, fame...  What's it good for?  Ab-so-lute-ly nothing

souka@kl.msc.umn.edu (Omar Souka) (04/11/91)

I got an upgrade notice in the mail yesterday for TMON Professional. 
Here's part of it as it appears in the notice :

Features

	fully supports 68000,68020,68030,FPU/PMMU
	fully supports 32-bit memory management
	works on multiple bit plane displays
	multiple n-shot breakpoints and watchpoints triggered by user-defined
conditions
	records parameters of breakpoints/traps
	displays system or user-defined types
	support discipline and dcmds
	saves window contents and memory dumps to disk
	supports c++ labels
	anchors windows to arbitrary expressions

Requirements

	mac plus or higher
	2MB or RAM recommended


Omar Souka                              E/Mail:  souka@msc.edu
Minnesota Supercomputer Center          AT&T:    612 625 7890
Minneapolis, MN                         FAX:     612 624 6550

jwhitnell@cup.portal.com (Jerry D Whitnell) (04/16/91)

TMON Pro is not shipping yet, according to their mail order people.  It is
currently due to ship later this week (of course they said that this time
last week as well).

Jerry Whitnell
SuperMac Technology
jwhitnell@cup.portal.com

waldemar@jelly.ai.mit.edu (Waldemar Horwat) (04/19/91)

TMON Pro is currently shipping.  The first one shipped on April 12, 1991.
All orders should be filled as fast as ICOM Simulations can send them.

				Waldemar Horwat

jwhitnell@cup.portal.com (Jerry D Whitnell) (04/19/91)

TMON Pro shipped Wens. and we got our first copy today.  I didn't have a
lot of time to play with it (there is alot to play with) but here are
some imporessions.

It is a complete rewrite, written in C++.  It supports all 680x0 chips,
displaying all registers and disassembling all instructions, including those
for the FPU and PMMU.  It supports full C expressions, intellegent dumps
of memory, anchor a window an arbitrary expression (not just n(reg)), 
breakpoints, watchpoints (watch for a memory location to change), branch
trace, individual selection of traps for heap checks, recording and discipline
and works with any size and depth of monitor without changing the depth.  It
includes a scripting language (something like SADE), as well as dcmd and 
multiple user area support so it is very programable.  The do-everything User
Area window of TMON is gone with all the functions of it (and alot more) moved
to sperate windows.  The script language is used for configuring the default
setup, as well as macros.  You can even load text files in and look at
(but not edit I think) them.  

Its is quite large (TMON itself is 777K on disk), and can use a lot of memory
(700K, but that includes a 1280 x 1024 monitor and including all the options).
You can configure everything from the size of the internal heap and stack to
what definitions it includes.  The windowing similar to TMON's, windows can
still only change in height, not in width.  There are now page up/down as
well as line up/down in the scroll bars.

It comes with two manuals, a tutorial and a references manual.  Every window,
check box, etc. has an equivalent command in the  scripting language, so
anything you can do from the keyboard can be done in a macro (I think, but
I havn't tested this obviously).  The manuals look very well done and the
user interface, while more cluttered then TMON, still retains alot of the
flavor as still appears to be reasonably easy to use.  But there is alot
more to learn then with TMON, but a lot more power as well.

As far as power is concerned, it blows away both TMON 2.8.x and Macsbug and
approaches or excees The Debugger in most areas.  The user interface is
far easier to learn then The Debugger's user interface, the manuals are
100 times better and it actually works when installed, unlike The Debugger
which either wouldn't come up or would mysteriously crash my machine.  My
vote is definitly for TMON Pro over The Debugger.  

MacWherehouse says they will have it for $149.00 and expect to be shipping
it April 23 (we got our first copy from ICOM direct).

Jerry Whitnell
SuperMac Technology

owen@sunfs3.Camex.COM (Owen Hartnett) (04/19/91)

TMON Professional is definitely shipping now.  Waldemar had a copy of
it (or at least the manuals, boxes, and disks, we didn't fire it up)
at the last BCS MacTechGrp meeting.  (The only reason we didn't fire
it up was because there was no Mac present - the presenter only needed
overhead slides, but I believe Waldemar when he says that the disks
had the program on it :-)).

-Owen