Microchip MPLAB ICE 4, MPLAB ICD 5 and PICKit 5 support

[mcuee]

1. MPLAB ICE 4 has been released for quite a while.
   https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development-tool/DV244140

I am not so sure if there are people who have it and want to play with avrdude. It is rather expensive though at US$2068.85) (much more expensive than Atmel-ICE at US$203.65 and PICKit 4 at US$88.54, and the new PICKit 5 at US$94.99).

2. Microchip has released PICKit 5 as an upgrade to PICKit 4. At US$94.99 it seems to be a decent tool to work with Microchip MCUs including AVRs. Therefore it will be good to see future support of PICKit 5 in avrdude
   https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development-tool/PG164150

3. Along with PICKit 5 (US$94.99), Microchip has released MPLAB ICD 5 at US$399.99. It will be good to add support for MPLAB ICD 5 in the future.
   https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development-tool/DV164055

[MCUdude]

@xedbg are the ICE 4 similar to the PICkit5 in which it uses byte-code scripts to program/debug AVRs instead of using a dedicated "mode" like the PICkit4 and the SNAP?

If the ICE 4 does it similarly to the PK4/SNAP, it should be trivial to add ICE 4 support even though I obviously don't have an ICE 4 to test with.

[mcuee]

@MCUdude

I think same question can be asked for MPLAB ICD5 which is of much lower cost than MPLAB ICE 4 (but a bit more expensive than Atmel-ICE).

• MPLAB ICD 5 support #1369

[xedbg]

Yes - all of these tools are equivalent in the way they work with PIC/AVR/MIPS/PIC32C/SAM

[mcuee]

Yes - all of these tools are equivalent in the way they work with PIC/AVR/MIPS/PIC32C/SAM

So basically PICKit 5, MPLAB ICD 5 and MPLAB ICE 4 work the same as you mentioned in the PICKit 5 issue, right? There is no AVR mode.

The PICkit5 to my knowledge supports only the native "PIC" mode, and has implemented AVR (and ARM) support in that mode using a system of byte-code scripts which are drawn from XML within the tool-pack. This means that it is only supported in MPLAB (and not Studio, or any other CMSIS-DAP-enabled third-party IDE) and even if the protocol were to be published, would unfortunately require a non-trivial amount of work to get it into avrdude.

[xedbg]

Yes - all of these tools are equivalent in the way they work with PIC/AVR/MIPS/PIC32C/SAM

So basically PICKit 5, MPLAB ICD 5 and MPLAB ICE 4 work the same as you mentioned in the PICKit 5 issue, right? There is no AVR mode.

Correct.

The PICkit5 to my knowledge supports only the native "PIC" mode, and has implemented AVR (and ARM) support in that mode using a system of byte-code scripts which are drawn from XML within the tool-pack. This means that it is only supported in MPLAB (and not Studio, or any other CMSIS-DAP-enabled third-party IDE) and even if the protocol were to be published, would unfortunately require a non-trivial amount of work to get it into avrdude.

[MCUdude]

OK, so if someone added support for PICkit5 in the future, it would be trivial to add the ICE 4 and ICD 5 as well?
This will absolutely be something Microchip would benefit from, so I hope they put some time and effort into this sometime in the future.

If yes, maybe @mcuee can combine #1367 and #1369 into a single issue; perhaps close this one (#1368) and #1369, and edit #1367?

[stefanrueger]

combine #1367 and #1369 into a single issue

I agree; it would be great to see the issues list shrink before we release v 7.2 😄

[mcuee]

Done. Closed #1367 and #1369 and merged into this one.

[mcuee]

It is interesting that Microchip is calling the new tools Gen 4 and Gen 5.

MPLABX IDE 6.15 release notes:
https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/documents/DEV/ProductDocuments/SupportingCollateral/mplabx-ide-release-notes-v6.15.zip

Hardware Tools - Gen 4
Release Notes for MPLAB Snap
Release Notes for MPLAB PICkit 4
Release Notes for MPLAB ICD 4
Release Notes for MPLAB ICE 4

Hardware Tools - Gen 5
Release Notes for MPLAB PICkit 5
Release Notes for MPLAB ICD 5

I guess the previous devices are categorized as Gen 1/2/3, roughly like the following (for the AVR side).

AVR Side
Gen 1 -- AVRISP, STK500v1, JTAGICE 1
Gen 2 -- AVRISP mkII, STK500v2, JTAGICE mkII, AVR Dragon
Gen 3 - JTAGICE 3, Atmel-ICE, Power Debugger, EDBG, mEDBG, nEBDG

PIC side
Gen 1 -- MPLAB ICD 1, PICkit 1, ICE 2000
Gen 2 -- MPLAB ICD 2, PICKIt 2,
Gen 3 -- PICKit 3, MPLAB ICD 3, MPLAB Real ICE

SAM side (Atmel ARM)
Gen 3 -- SAM-ICE

[xedbg]

Not quite right, but close.
AVR generations refer primarily to the codebase architecture and not the hardware directly and uses the 'n'G notation as you see in the pack changelogs.
So:
3G: JTAGICE3, Atmel-ICE, PowerDebugger, EDBG
4G: mEDBG
5G: nEDBG, AVR image in PICkit4 and Snap

[mcuee]

Not quite right, but close. AVR generations refer primarily to the codebase architecture and not the hardware directly and uses the 'n'G notation as you see in the pack changelogs.
So:
3G: JTAGICE3, Atmel-ICE, PowerDebugger, EDBG
4G: mEDBG
5G: nEDBG, AVR image in PICkit4 and Snap

Thanks for the correction. Still your classification does not match MPLABX IDE 6.15 release notes for HW tools Generation classification.

MPLABX IDE 6.15 release notes:
https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/documents/DEV/ProductDocuments/SupportingCollateral/mplabx-ide-release-notes-v6.15.zip

Hardware Tools - Gen 4
Release Notes for MPLAB Snap
Release Notes for MPLAB PICkit 4
Release Notes for MPLAB ICD 4
Release Notes for MPLAB ICE 4

Hardware Tools - Gen 5
Release Notes for MPLAB PICkit 5
Release Notes for MPLAB ICD 5

[xedbg]

My classification accounts for legacy Atmel debuggers. (There is no relationship between "GEN5" and "5G")

[mcuee]

My classification accounts for legacy Atmel debuggers. (There is no relationship between "GEN5" and "5G")

I see. Thanks for the clarification.

[MX682X]

I hope it's ok to revive this old issue.
I had some vacation so I decided to try to brind UPDI Debugging to the Arduino IDE (because of the backbone of DxCore/megaTinyCore) I didn't manage to have the debugging Bugfree, but Programming seems to work like a charm.
I hope this python file will be of use for you guys to figure out how to port it to avrdude.
I'm not sure if the "scripts" are the same for all chips, I admit I only checked it with the AVR32DD28 I had on hand. However the {USER_DIR} \ .mchp_packs\Microchip \ [Debugger] \ [version] \ firmware \ scripts.xml that comes with the install of MPLAB has them all, so it should be possible to build a data extractor (I ran out of time before I could start with that)
https://github.com/MX682X/PK5-UPDI-GDB-Server/blob/main/pk_debugger_iface.py
The functions you'll probably need are
"prepare_target_flash" - loads new Data to a buffer
"finalize_download" - will erase the chip, load new program, and verify it
"attach_target" & "detach_target"- establishes/stops Debugger operation

[MCUdude]

Hi @MX682X! It's impressive what you've been able to accomplish with the PICkit5! It looks like a lot of work, especially because of the lack of protocol documentation. I know Microchip hasn't made it easy, but it would be really cool if we somehow could get Avrdude to support the PICkit5. I know it's a lot to ask, but is this something you'd be willing to look into? Thanks!

[MX682X]

@MCUdude I was planning to continue the work on it soon, I was just busy with Uni in the last couple of months.
In fact, I was able to figure out how the instruction set of the scripts looks like (ok, not really, it's all guesswork still), so it's possible to do custom functions. (Yes, the scripts.xml is just special assembler).
However, my Problem is, that I have no idea how avrdude works - and frankly, I'd like to keep the number of projects I'm involved with low, otherwise it will be hard to keep track of everything. I can give some hints on how it works, but it's really just the functions you see in the python files.

[mcuee]

PICkit 5 UPDI support has been added. It also supports PICkit 4 and SNAP in PIC mode.

• PICkit 5 support #1863