On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 03:40:19PM -0400, Nicolas Pitre wrote:

On Mon, 14 Jun 2010, Mitch Bradley wrote:

quoted

Arranging for a JTAG dongle to appear at the customer site, then 
getting it set up and the necessary software installed and configured 
on a suitable host system, typically requires several days at best, 
plus potentially a lot of fiddling depending on what sort of host 
system the customer happens to have.

Well, if I may use the SheevaPlug as an example, the actual FT2232 chip 
currently used in most of those USB-JTAG dongle was provided directly on 
the board.  So you have this standard mini-B type USB connector on the 
side of the device from which you get both a serial console and a JTAG 
interface.  All you need is a standard USB cable, just like the one you 
get with a MP3 player or a digital camera, so there are plenty of those 
around.

The other thing here is of course that if JTAG is a problem serial or
other console access is likely to also be a problem - it's likely to not
be physically present and at least as painful to set up as JTAG.