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Hello :)
I am new to 8051 family programming and I have a question. I would like to know if there is anyway, somehow, to put another software in a memory and load it from 8051 to run on it. It would work similar to plugins :)
Speaking in C language, it would be like a function inside the memory that do something. That function receives a pointer to a structure that has many other functions that the main software inside the microcontroller has, like display things on a screen. Well, is very similar to plugins :)
Is this possible? With other microcontroller maybe?
If I said something wrong or confuse please, let me know! Thank you!
The Keil evaluation tools are good but size-limited. If you go for the Keil tools (they are quite good) you will need to buy the (quite expensive) commercial license.
gcc does not have a size limitation. But Keil dropped support for gcc long time ago. And to my knowledge, you will still not be able to debug larger code.
I use the commercial version of Keil tools, so you will have to wait and see if there is any gcc user here who can jump in and give better feedback about that alternative.
The two choices are not fully compatible. The biggest difference will be in the startup code, which is written in assembler. Depending on what target processor you use, there may also be code differences when you implement interrupt handlers.
There are other vendors who have products based around the gcc. But same thing there - you will have to find some user to get some feedback about the offerings.
An alternative when looking for development tools is to select a development board with uClinux already ported. Then you can get all software tools you need for free.
On the other hand, this may not match your intended problem.