I have decided I am going to try and use Tide. Why? .... ... I ... don't ... let's move on*.

Just getting it to start and not constantly throw Failed to set data for 'version' errors every time options are changed is a bit of a mission. So I'm going to document my experience in this thread.

First off to fix the Failed to set data for 'version' error:

Right click on tide.exe in the .\WDC\Tools\bin directory and change Properties -> Compatibility to "Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows XP (Service Pack 3)" and check "Run this program as an administrator."

I also have the following configured in "Edit System Environment Variables" under "System Variables" -> "Path"
C:\WDC\Tools\INCLUDE
C:\WDC\Tools\LIB
C:\WDC\Tools\BIN

and have additional "System Variables":
WDC_INC_6502 -> C:\WDC\Tools\INCLUDE
WDC_INC_65816 -> C:\WDC\Tools\INCLUDE
WDC_LIB -> C:\WDC\Tools\LIB

If your installation of WDC Tools is not in C:\WDC then you'll need to update the above to point to where you have installed them.

* I want to experiment with W65C816 programming and the C compiler that seems to generate the best '816 code is the WDC816CC compiler (when using the optimiser). Using the WDC C compiler from the command line getting to me so I thought. "Let me use their IDE instead". And now I'm here.

hi ... I use the WDC-suite of products also ... mostly OK if you are willing to use some workarounds ... and used the TIDE in the beginning for my first "hello world"-kind of projects ... I was hoping/thinking that I could also use the ACAI emulator which is used in some of the provided samples ... but have not worked out how to relocate the ACAI address registers to match my memory-mapping ... any idea on how to (re)configure the ACIA emulator? or can it only be used using the TIDE memory addresses? ... thanks

Hi, I'd guess that if the ACIA was configurable in the WDC Debugger (WDCDB.exe) then the settings would be under the [Memory] sections of the WDCDB.INI file.

However as there are no settings for it in the demo projects I don't think it can be moved. I had quite high hopes for WDCDB and was really wanting to use it to simulate a 65C816 but between random program crashes, configuration inflexibility (seriously, give me more than 64KB of memory) and an apparent lack of support for native mode I've given up on it.

As for Tide... it's pretty obviously an unfinished and unsupported product. I found it useful for getting started using wdc816as.exe, wdc816cc.exe and wdcln.exe but after grabbing their respective command line options I don't really see any use for it.

Very similar path as I have followed.
I posted "WDC Tools gotcha's" some time ago here in "Programming" ... would be interested to see you found out other items that can be added.