Patent ID: 7089175

Claim:
A combined in-circuit emulation system and programmer, comprising: a pod carrying an emulation microcontroller and a socket for programming another microcontroller; a base station having virtual microcontroller that operates in lock-step synchronization with the emulation microcontroller during emulation operations; an interface connecting the pod to the base station, the interface having a dock signal line, a pair of data signal lines, a reset line and a power line, wherein the reset line is connected to transmit a reset signal to the emulation microcontroller without transmitting the reset signal to the socket; and wherein the emulation microcontroller can be placed in a sleep mode so that a microcontroller residing in the socket can be programmed by receiving programming instructions from the base station without the programming being disturbed by actions of the emulation microcontroller, and wherein the programming instructions are sent to the microcontroller residing in the socket using one of the data lines for clock and another of the data lines for the programming instructions.