[NBLUG/talk] JTAG Anyone?

[Robert P. Thille]

Bob Blick wrote:
> Hi Robert,
> 
> Most JTAG interfaces are standard. Yours is. You can get cheap ones at 
> SparkFun Electronics that connect to the printer port:
> http://www.sparkfun.com

Thanks for the link, I looked around there a bit...

> Look at ARM or MSP dev tools. Either of those will work, ignore the 
> extra non-JTAG-specific pins, they are used for debugging and are 
> specifif to those processors. You'll spend about $20.

Right, I'd known about all the Wiggler knockoffs from searching before. 
  I've dealt with parallel port programmers for PIC Micro work and after 
going to USB for that I'd never go back :-)  Part of it was the fact 
that it involved pulling my computer out of the closet and putting it on 
my already crowded workbench and part that the PCI parallel port card I 
was using would crash Windows after the SP2 update :-(  Going with USB 
will help me 'future proof' the purchase, neither of my current PCs have 
on motherboard parallel ports, and I can't imagine any new one I buy 
having one.  The difference from $20 to $35 isn't a big deal for me, but 
I would like to get the shipping down to something reasonable, like 
$10-$12 (buy three & split it).

> The USB JTAG interfaces usually just add a USB-to-printer-port chip, so 
> if you have a printer port already it's actually better.
But from what I've seen all the parallel-port based programmers are 
really slow, whereas the USB ones are supposed to be much faster.  Not 
sure why that is though, unless it's the lack of DMA to the parallel 
port on most PCs.

Thanks for your input!

Robert



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