starting a microcontroller simulator/emulator

Question

I would like to create/start a simulator for the following microcontroller board: http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=707#

The firmware is

Answer 1

Is there a particular reason to make an emulator/simulator, vs. just using the real thing?

The board is inexpensive; Microchip now has the RealICE debugger which is quite a bit more responsive than the old ICD2 "hockey puck".

Microchip's MPLAB already has a built-in simulator. It won't simulate the whole board for you, but it will handle the 18F2520. You can sort of use input test vectors & log output files, I've done this before with a different Microchip IC and it was doable but kinda cumbersome. I would suggest you take the unit-testing approach and modularize the way you do things; figure out your test inputs and expected outputs for a manageable piece of the system.