I am reading "Patterns for time triggered embedded systems" of Michael J. Pont but I realized that I have a lack of C language knowledge. Could you please suggest me wich one among the two books listed below is the best choice? - C and the 8051 Thomas Schultz - Microcontroller projects in C for the 8051 family. Dogan Ibrahim Thank you in advance Francesco Fontana
For Instance, memory allocation and pointers do not exist in java and I never understood the real purpose of the function "malloc". For the '51 you do not need to. Malloc is one of the C features you should avoid when using the '51 For instance how can I know if the memory available on a standard 8051 is enough to calculate a sinus(). A normal high level language compiler assumes an almost endless memory so you never deal with these problems. if there is not enough, you will get an error message. I suggest you get a SILabs f120 devkit ($149) that gives you "everything" (128k program memory, 8k data memory) Another concern, since as long as I understood C uses a software stack, is it necessary to use an external ram to run programs compiled in C ? Keil C does not pass parametres on the stack. If you need more than the standatd 256 bytes of DATA storage, instead of an external RAM, use one of the chips such as SILabs f12x, Pilips P89C668... that has "external RAM inside" what about recursion?. just avoid it, if you do it by mistake, you WILL get an error message. If you absolutotally, unconditionally, unavoidably need it there is the "reentrant" keyword. Erik
the SILabs devkits gives you ICElike capabilities which I would not like to be without were I to learn a new processor.