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A few years ago, I inherited dozens of tubes of 8051 MCUs, specifically the Atmel AT89C51ED2-IM. I know they're old - and clearly tons of much better MCUs exist - but they'd be useful. (Plus, it just feels wrong discarding 100+ good chips.)
Any suggestions what Keil (or other) product to use, which programming gizmo, and possibly a dev board? I'd like to spend as little as possible as this is hobby stuff. 8051 assembler or C is fine.
So far, I've found these but am uncertain if they'll work:
I understand that Arduino's can be used for the programmer / loader, but apparently the "C" type Atmel's I have need a more sophisticated programming device than the "S" types (or is that incorrect?)
Any assistance is greatly appreciated. thanks!
There are lots of new 8051's with modern debugging, compared to these parts you have. The ones you have might be worth a pretty penny on eBay and someone may desperately need them, but that's a guess. If you can sell them you can buy SILabs parts or Nuvoton, both if which have excellent development boards with real debugging and great C language support (as well as assembler). My $0.02.
If you want to start from scratch with your existing parts then look for simulator support or a monitor program.
Lots of chip vendors have full licenses for the Keil tools for free, including, but not limited to, SILabs and Nuvoton. I personally hate the tools from Atmel and/or Microchip.
Grant, selling them on Ebay's an interesting idea that hadn't occurred to me. All the varieties of 8051's I looked at there ranged from ~= 1.50USD to a whooping 18 USD. (I guess that seller needs to pay for their Shrink's visit. LOL). Mine were discards from a machine-controller manufacturer - when they upgraded their MCU's, they just tossed 'em in the dumpster where a friend retrieved them. I guess if I try the Ebay thing, I'd better look and see what other sellable things I have in my shop to make the effort worth it. I can't imagine selling them for more than a couple of bucks each. That it might help someone else would be a good thing.
I appreciate the leads on SILabs and Novoton - I will check them out and grab a few of the newer versions.
(I too have issues with Microchip's tool chains :)
Thanks for the reply!
- Howard