[sci.electronics] comp.sys.yet_another_silly_newsgroup.i8051 :-)

henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (09/14/90)

In article <6334@castle.ed.ac.uk> elee24@castle.ed.ac.uk (H Bruce) writes:
>PS I am an active UNIX and net user that does a lot of work with the 8051
>   microcontroller family. However there does not appear to be an appropriate
>   newsgroup. Any one interested in setting up comp.sys.8051 ????

Why?  If there is no traffic, creating the group won't make it magically
appear.  If you want to talk about 8051s, pick the closest existing group
and start doing so.  If the volume of talk about them gets too large and
it starts to bother the existing inhabitants of the group, they will let
you know :-), and *then* it will be time to give the topic its own group.
-- 
TCP/IP: handling tomorrow's loads today| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
OSI: handling yesterday's loads someday|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry

wayned@wddami.spoami.com (Wayne Diener) (09/14/90)

I would probably be interested....

>>PS I am an active UNIX and net user that does a lot of work with the 8051
>>   microcontroller family. However there does not appear to be an appropriate
>>   newsgroup. Any one interested in setting up comp.sys.8051 ????
>
>Why?  If there is no traffic, creating the group won't make it magically
>appear.  If you want to talk about 8051s, pick the closest existing group
>and start doing so.  If the volume of talk about them gets too large and
>it starts to bother the existing inhabitants of the group, they will let
>you know :-), and *then* it will be time to give the topic its own group.

OK, let's start here!  (I was going to be posting this question this
weekend anyway :-) )

There's an effort being made at work to convert from using strictly
ASM51 for our development projects to using one of the 'C' compilers,
simulators, etc.  I would greatly appreciate any comments/suggestions
as to which products are good, mediocre or bad.  Some of the concerns
that we have are (versus assembler):

   1)  What is the relative size increase we could expect to see in our
       object code?

   2)  What is the relative speed decrease we could expect to see in 
       execution times?

   3)  What is available in the way of support utilities (i.e. make,
       librarian, etc)

   4)  Are there compatibility problems involved in linking with modules
       written in ASM51?

   5)  Etc.  If I get a large response, I'll summarize and post the
       results.

   Also.  I use the 8052-BASIC as my "jelly-bean" controller for most
   of my home projects.  Since the BASIC is so slow, I have to do quite
   a lot of assembler level programming to make it useful.  In order
   to expedite this process, I've developed a kind of standardized 
   architecture which I use which includes the "extras" EPROM (with
   the assemblers, editors, etc) from INTEL (I don't believe that part
   was ever officially released by INTEL but you might be able to
   get it from your rep.  If there's sufficient interest, I'll check 
   with INTEL and see if it's possible to post an INTEL hex file of
   the code.  I also have the source code for the BASIC (same status
   as the "extras") which allow you to do some neat calls to the 
   BASIC internals).   To run it all, I wrote a Turbo Pascal program
   which allows you to develop your programs on a PC (semi-interactive)
   which allows you to store all your programs on your hard disk, use
   your favorite editor, do all the handshaking for up/download of the
   programs, a very primitive "make", etc.  Again, if there's sufficient
   interest, I'll post those items (or a whole package) that people 
   might request.
 
 ---
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|       //                  Wayne D. Diener                     |
|      //                   Spokane, WA                         |
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