Editing PIC microcontrollers (section)

==Debugging==
{{Main article|MPLAB devices}}

===In-circuit debugging===
All newer PIC devices feature an ICD (in-circuit debugging) interface, built into the CPU core, that allows for interactive debugging of the program in conjunction with [[MPLAB]] IDE. [[MPLAB devices|MPLAB ICD]] and [[MPLAB devices|MPLAB REAL ICE]] debuggers can communicate with this interface using the [[In-circuit serial programming|ICSP]] interface.

This debugging system comes at a price however, namely limited breakpoint count (1 on older devices, 3 on newer devices), loss of some I/O (with the exception of some surface mount 44-pin PICs which have dedicated lines for debugging) and loss of some on-chip features.

Some devices do not have on-chip debug support, due to cost or lack of pins. Some larger chips also have no debug module. To debug these devices, a special -ICD version of the chip mounted on a daughter board which provides dedicated ports is required. Some of these debug chips are able to operate as more than one type of chip by the use of selectable jumpers on the daughter board. This allows broadly identical architectures that do not feature all the on-chip peripheral devices to be replaced by a single -ICD chip. For example: the 16F690-ICD will function as one of six different parts, each of which features none, some or all of five on-chip peripherals.<ref>Microchip document No. DS51292R</ref>

===In-circuit emulators===
Microchip offers three full [[in-circuit emulator]]s<!--anyone ever actually used these??-->: the [[MPLAB devices|MPLAB ICE2000]] (parallel interface, a USB converter is available); the newer [[MPLAB devices|MPLAB ICE4000]] (USB 2.0 connection); and most recently, the [[MPLAB devices|REAL ICE]] (USB 2.0 connection). All such tools are typically used in conjunction with [[MPLAB]] IDE for source-level interactive debugging of code running on the target.