John Sheley of Portland, OR sent me the following note in which he asked about bus-contention resistors on evaluation-kit boards...

Years ago, true in-circuit emulator (ICE) pods provided bonded-out processor chips that gave designers access to internal chip signals. Most microcontrollers now support on-chip debug, background debug mode, or JTAG-like interface that simplifies program development and debugging, and usually accommodates programming flash memory from a host computer.

During a conversation about motor controllers, Jonathan Guy, the software and systems manager at Texas Instruments' Stellaris group mentioned an interesting debug technique that links processor code to real-world events. Instead of using software-debug tools to "watch" a variable, Jonathan suggested sending the value to a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) via an SPI or I2C port. That approach makes a lot of sense because those I/O ports require few pins and they can transfer information in near-real-time. And, you can view the output of the DAC along with digital and analog signals from elsewhere in your system on a scope. If you need to watch several variables, you can buy 4-channel SPI or I2C DACs.

In early 2010, Intel released information about its new 2010 Core processor family--the i7, i5 and i3 chips that offer software compatibility with earlier IA-32 (x86-family) processors. Although most of the new chips will find homes in PCs of various types, Intel highlighted 12 devices aimed at embedded devices with the following information in its press release...