about pic emulators

hi!
I am a senior student in computer science. In our senior design course,
we are supposed to develop a pic emulator for the card that is used in
embedded course in our department. This card uses 16F877 pic.
Since we're not experienced  in this area, we don't know what should a
pic emulator has. We want to know  the pros and cons of pic emulators
at present.
If someone can help us, we will be glad.  
Thank you...

<yunusesencayi@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1164274858.837315.184750@l12g2000cwl.googlegroups.com...
> hi!
> I am a senior student in computer science. In our senior design 
> course,
> we are supposed to develop a pic emulator for the card that is used in
> embedded course in our department. This card uses 16F877 pic.
> Since we're not experienced  in this area, we don't know what should a
> pic emulator has. We want to know  the pros and cons of pic emulators
> at present.
> If someone can help us, we will be glad.
> Thank you...

Are you designing an in-circuit emulator or are you designing a piece of 
PC software that will run PIC programs in the way that your card would 
(more likely called a simulator)?

If it is an in-circuit emulator then one pro is that you can run all 
your programs without having to program a part but one downside is that 
the emulator may not behave exactly as a PIC would. 

On 23 Nov 2006 01:40:58 -0800, yunusesencayi@gmail.com wrote:

>hi!
>I am a senior student in computer science. In our senior design course,
>we are supposed to develop a pic emulator for the card that is used in
>embedded course in our department. This card uses 16F877 pic.
>Since we're not experienced  in this area, we don't know what should a
>pic emulator has. We want to know  the pros and cons of pic emulators
>at present.
>If someone can help us, we will be glad.  
>Thank you...

First off, I'd imagine that you would be already well-versed in what
is being required of you in the course.  Although at your level, you
should be beyond the need to be "led around by the nose," it's also
the usual case that you aren't thrust into something without good
class preparations.

It's hard to tell from your far too short description of work, but the
term 'simulator' (which may normally be a computer science course
task) is usually limited to software-only that emulates the device.
This simulates the core ALU functions and general instruction set but
either may or may not simulate the peripherals found on it.  That
would be part of the spec and only you know what that is.

The term 'emulator' is sometimes a specialized word meaning a device
that includes hardware and software and can replace the functionality
of some component (such as a micro) but can provide far more control
and information than the basic device itself does.  For example, an
emulator may commonly provide a trace buffer holding perhaps many
thousands of individual cycle steps that you can peruse later on or
trace backwards through that precedes some event.  It also can be a
more general (blunted or less precise) term that can be nothing more
than a broadening of the idea of 'emulation' that I just mentioned
earlier with regards to simulators.  So these terms can be conflated,
unfortunately.

I shouldn't need to say all this, as you should already know what was
meant in the department's curriculum.  My own reading of your phrasing
above would sound to me like, "Build a system composed of hardware and
software that can replace the function of the existing card used in
your department's embedded course and be used for similar purposes and
provides certain emulator features such as stop/start, breakpointing
on value or location, etc."  But since you said "computer science"
course, I'd tend to imagine you just need to simulate the PIC and not
emulate the card.  Now if it is simulation alone, it may still include
the fact that there are specific functions on that card you haven't
disclosed here but where your department still expects to be included
in your simulation efforts.  You may NOT need to exactly simulate all
of the PIC peripherals on a cycle-by-cycle basis, but may really only
need to simulate certain peripherals and only in the general sense of
how they are connected to other hardware on that card.

Of course, none of us out here has any idea what you are talking about
or should do.

So what's really up, here?  If you can't be bothered to completely
disclose what's going on or if you don't even know completely what you
are being asked to do, it's going to put a huge burden on everyone
else you are asking help of.  Perhaps you want that, I don't know. But
you should demonstrate a little something here, I think, before asking
for help.  Tell us what is going on.  What you've said already is way
too little.  Unless all you want are a bunch of ignorant links to web
pages -- but if that is all you want, you already have google.

Jon

Sorry for my mistake. You're right, I didn't explain my needs in the
previous message.
First of all, I am not a cs student in fact. Our department is computer
engineering. But there is not a certain distinction between cs and ceng
in our country's universities.
We take some electronics courses besides cs courses.
So, let me try to explain what is going on. To be able to do this, let
me give the description of the project belove.

Emulator and Development Environment for CEng Embedded System Card

    Aspects:GUI, digital electronics, compilers, system programming
    Description:
    CEng embedded system card is the card that is used in CEng 336
"Embedded Systems" course. It includes two PIC processors and various
interfaces like LCD, Parallel, Serial, USB ports, smartcard reader,
LED's etc. In this project, you will implement a software emulator,
compiler and development environment for this card. Users will be able
to compile, upload and debug their programs to the card. Also they will
be able to test their programs in the virtual card emulated by
software.

I hope the description is enough to describe what we need.
If you can share your experiences, it will be very helpful for us. We
are open to all ideas you'll give. But if you think that, I can find by
google
what I can reach by asking to you, i respect to your thoughts.
thank you for your time.

yunusesencayi@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> Sorry for my mistake. You're right, I didn't explain my needs in
> the previous message.

You failed to quote anything, which makes your article
incomprehensible.  All usenet articles should stand by themselves. 
That means quote enough of what you are answering so that your
article makes sense.  There is no reason to assume the recipient
has ever seen, or ever will se, any previous articles in the
thread.  Google is not usenet, it is only a poor imitation of an
interface to the usenet system.

-- 
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
   <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>

yunusesencayi@gmail.com wrote:
> Sorry for my mistake. You're right, I didn't explain my needs in the
> previous message.
> First of all, I am not a cs student in fact. Our department is computer
> engineering. But there is not a certain distinction between cs and ceng
> in our country's universities.
> We take some electronics courses besides cs courses.
> So, let me try to explain what is going on. To be able to do this, let
> me give the description of the project belove.
> 
> Emulator and Development Environment for CEng Embedded System Card
> 
>     Aspects:GUI, digital electronics, compilers, system programming
>     Description:
>     CEng embedded system card is the card that is used in CEng 336
> "Embedded Systems" course. It includes two PIC processors and various
> interfaces like LCD, Parallel, Serial, USB ports, smartcard reader,
> LED's etc. In this project, you will implement a software emulator,
> compiler and development environment for this card. Users will be able
> to compile, upload and debug their programs to the card. Also they will
> be able to test their programs in the virtual card emulated by
> software.
> 
> I hope the description is enough to describe what we need.
> If you can share your experiences, it will be very helpful for us. We
> are open to all ideas you'll give. But if you think that, I can find by
> google
> what I can reach by asking to you, i respect to your thoughts.
> thank you for your time.
> 

Be careful of the translation to English if is a simulation that runs on 
a PC it is a simulator.  If it is a piece of hardware it is an emulator.
a control program that runs part on the hardware an part on the PC would 
be a debugger.

The Simulator in not that hard. You know how the CPU works.  Create data 
structures for the registers and Memory.  Read an instruction from the 
simulated ROM and do what it says.

Debuggers require more work.
Emulators, if you are asking it is out of your league.  You create an 
equivilent chip in an ASIC or FPGA.  Then add  remote control hardware 
to it.