Hardware Setup

Preliminaries

  1. 1.Use USB communication between the PC and MPLAB ICE 4. Other communication types do not support trace.
  2. 2.Find devices that support Native, SPI or I/O Port trace – see Help>Release Notes> Debug Features Support>Hardware Tool Debug Features by Device.
  3. 3.Design the target board to have a connector for emulator-target communication if using the PIC MCUs - ICSP Adapter Board. Alternately design the target board to connect to the high-speed 40-pin ribbon cable with pins for both debug and trace (see Target Connection Pinout.)
    Note: If using I/O Port trace, you will need to use the high-speed 40-pin ribbon cable for communications and access to port pins.
  4. 4.When using SPI trace, pins 7 (DAT) and 8 (CLK) are used. Therefore, you cannot use the other functions multiplexed on these pins. When using I/O Port trace, the port used for trace must not be multiplexed with the currently-used PGC and PGD pins.

Set Up Hardware

To use the PIC Instrumentation Trace feature with your own board do the following:

  1. 1.The target board should be unpowered.
  2. 2.Install communication cable between the emulator or adapter board and the communication connector on your target board.
  3. 3.Power the target.
Parent topic: Instrumented Trace for PIC MCUs and dsPIC DSCs