AVR s/w emulator ?

Hi,

Is it possible to use the AVR s/w emulator on AVRStudio running on a PC and
somehow get external control signals (serial or parallel port) that would 
correspond to signals produced by an actual AVR? 

The reason I'm asking is that I have to design a small scale electromechanical
elevator model that would be controlled by a microcontroller together with PLC 
units and the AVR was suggested as a possible condidate. Since a PC would 
already be in the loop I thought that a micro might be superfluous. There
might also be other ways to generate such control signals using a PC with
minimal hardware involved.

Any advice/suggestions welcome.

TIA

A. Drosos wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is it possible to use the AVR s/w emulator on AVRStudio running on a
> PC and somehow get external control signals (serial or parallel port)
> that would correspond to signals produced by an actual AVR?
>
> The reason I'm asking is that I have to design a small scale
> electromechanical elevator model that would be controlled by a
> microcontroller together with PLC units and the AVR was suggested as
> a possible condidate. Since a PC would already be in the loop I
> thought that a micro might be superfluous. There might also be other
> ways to generate such control signals using a PC with minimal
> hardware involved.
>
> Any advice/suggestions welcome.
>
> TIA

Yes, AVR Studio could do the job but it is difficult
often not documented to external parties, has restrictions
and will require more development than it is worth.

You could use the FPSLIC tools, and write a PLI/VPI language interface to
Modelsim.

The AVR Studio simulator loads DLLs for each peripheral and such a DLL could
contain code which commnunicated with external hardware.
This is an internal API so you have to reverse engineer the protocol.

You could port output to a file stored on a USB device.
This USB device looks like a USB memory but whenever
the port output is written to the file, the device will
instead write to its output port.

I think you would be beter off using a std AVR chip.
-- 
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com
This message is intended to be my own personal view and it
may or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB