Tag Archives: microchip

Nov 06

Microchip’s MPLAB X Gets an update. V1.95 Now available.

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Microchip have released an update to their IDE, MPLAB X.
MPLAB X IDE v1.95 is available now for download from here

This seems to be a minor point release with the following main updates since v1.90

  • ICSP cable support for UNI/O
  • SQTP in Aux Memory support
  • Harmony quick start and Forum links
  • Enum label support within watch window
  • Detection of Compiler beta device support
  • Support for selection from multiple tools under MDB
  • Support for multiple instances of IPE or IDE
  • Improved Tool discovery on Windows PC’s (fixed a windows issue where tools were not always detected)
  • Break up of large arrays into 100 sub elements to improve performance in debugging and the watch window.
  • Bug Fixes

On windows MPLAB X now uses the latest Java JRE (v1.7) but on Mac OS X we are still stuck at JRE 1.6 which is a bit of an issue, because OS X will try to push the latest Jave Update to users and many of them will accept it, pushing the system up to JRE 1.7, which breaks various things in MPLAB X. Of particular concern is that one of Microchip’s flagship programmer/debuggers the ICD 3 doesn’t work when JRE 1.7 is present. If a user updates their Mac to JRE 1.7, then it’s not an easy job to revert back to 1.6.

I believe the underlying issue is that MPLAB X is built on NetBeans, and Microchip is using an older fork of NetBeans with some out of date JRE dependencies.

Let’s hope we can convince Microchip to move to being JRE 1.7 compatible pretty soon.

Oct 21

Issues with ICD3 in Mac OS X

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I’ve been using Microchip’s MPLAB X on Mac OS X for some time now, and really getting along nicely with it.

I use it for various projects and with a range of different hardware targets and programmers.

I’m using MPLAB X v1.90 with PicKIT2, PicKIT3 and ICD3 and until recently I’ve had little or no trouble.

Last week, however, I allowed the 2013-005 Java Software Update from Apple to install. This updated my VM from JRE 6 to JRE7 (aka Java version 1.7).

Everything seemed fine until I tried to program a device using my ICD3 debugger/programmer.

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