!pr2
!lm12
!rm75
Review of QUICKTRACE............................Mike Sanders

I had already started writing my own debugger when I discovered QUICKTRACE; it was just what I needed and saved me all that work.

It has a good display that does not interfere with the normal Apple text screen.  You can even trace code that sets the KSWL and CSWL switches and outputs to the screen.  The tracing display takes the bottom four lines, but pressing the "P" key causes the normal bottom four lines to be displayed.

Tracing can be in one of three modes:  single-step, trace, and background.  Single-step and trace are what you would expect, analogous to the commands in the old Apple monitor ROM.  Background turns off the display of executed instructions until a breakpoint occurs or the "ESC" key is pressed.  This makes background the fastest mode.

Breakpoints can be set to stop when:

!lm+5
1.  Any register or a memory location takes on a specified value.
2.  An address or a range of addresses is referenced.
3.  A specified opcode occurs.
!lm-5

QUICKTRACE can be BRUN at any point in memory and then called from your code by a JSR, or you can preset the QUICKTRACE
program counter and start tracing at any location.

Subroutines can be executed at full 6502 speed (not traced).  If you already know what the subroutine does there is no need to trace through it.  Normally DOS calls are automatically done this way to prevent timing problems.

Overall I feel that QUICKTRACE is one of the five or so best programs I have ever purchased and no machine code programmer should be without it.

One feature not to be overlooked:  QUICKTRACE is not copy protected.

QUICKTRACE was programmed by John Rogers and it is distributed by Anthro-Digital Software (formerly called Aurora Systems).  It only costs $50.
