Re: 8051 Development Board / 89C51 / MCS51 / 8052

On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 14:07:17 +0000, Ken Smith wrote:
> In article <lNize.6746$gD5.5420@trndny06>,
> Martin Riddle <martinriddle@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>Ti has their 8051 dev board for $99 also.
>
> Is the compiler and debugging stuff included?
>
> BTW: An unlimited assembler for 8051 can be had for free. The 8051 is
> easy enough to program in ASM that I'd even suggest a hobbiest try it, so
> if the TI one doesn't include a compiler but does have the debugging stuff
> it would be a good option.
>
Well, I'm gonna chime in here on behalf of Rich the Techie, because
as duck fupped as I am, I concur whole heartedly about learning 8051 ASM.
Just because I fell in love with the Motorola HC11 when someone presented
me with a whole product to *** around with the design of, and a
development system, doesn't mean that I have anything uncomplimentary
to say about the 8051.

In fact, come to think of it, One time while between projects, and
freeloading off this one babe, she came home one evening after having
visited, of all places, the Orange County (CA) fair. She said that
she had seen some guy in a booth selling robots and had somehow
occasioned to chat him up - she must have picked up some kind of
vibe - At the time I was a tech playing Engineer on tv, OK? I
had just shot myself in the foot and talked myself right out of a
US$27.00/hr gig - in 1988 - I bought a 2-story, 3-bedroom town house
(like a condo, but you get a mortgage), for US$120,000. I bought a
Ford Mustang off the showroom for way more than I should have paid
for it, back in the days when you could negotiate with car
dealers.

I was on an open-ended contract. I had a PO for
Quantity Unit of issue Item Each Price
2 LOT Programming services $27.00 TBD

And didn't know what a fucking gold mine that was. I was also
attending New Age "Get Rich Today By Following These Simple
Positive Thinking Things" classes - or seminars, or speeches,
or presentations - they took place at this huge expensive new-
age church in Huntington Beach (CA), the church of Divine
Science or Religious Science - that's it - Religious Science.
The Divine Science church is the one in Irvine where I was a
staffer for awhile.

Anyways, the lectures were encouraging me, since I'd obviously
reached the Napoleon Hill threshold ("Just visualize it and you
can have it - become one with Infinite Intelligence!") I decided,
in 1988, with my only credentials being "electronic tech in the
USAF and been programming since he could get his hands on
computers", I demanded more money and a rewrite of the contract.
Three months later, I was on my own. Of course, having never
learned to get actual customers, and with the cocky attitude
of the newly successful new-ager, I went totally free-lance.
I put an ad in the paper. When credit card companies or loan
sharks, or whatever they were, would send me a check for $1000.00
out of the clear blue sky, with a little letter where the fine
print says, "Your signing of this check signifies acceptance
of the terms and conditions of this loan", what the frap? They
Sent Me Money! So I used the credit card company checks to pay
the mortgage payments for awhile.

When it got so bad (i.e., broke because I didn't know how to
find work) that I had to break down and sell the house, it was
in 1989, and the selling price was $140,000.00. It paid off the
mortgage (and, I think, cleared my GI, if I want to spend a
couple mil on a house! ;-p ), got caught up on the association
dues, got caught up on all of the rest of the bills, and there
was $320.00 left over for me, I still had the car, and the girl
was stilll letting me hang out at her place. In fact, she let
me put a bunch of crap in her garage for awhile. But, that's
an entirely nother story - what was my point?

Oh, yeah! The 8051! Maybe I should start over. While hanging
out with this babe, she noticed the guy at the county fair
in one of the booths, selling robots, or something like that,
and it somehow came to light that he'd be interested talking
to somebody who could work out a remote control device of
some kind where wheelchair-bound people could give commands
to this robot. He had a working model, albeit it was
controlled by a couple of joysticks - it could pick up a
can of soda pop and pour it into the customer's mouth, as
long as the customer operated both joysticks simultaneously.

What he was interested in was voice control. Now, he'd already
solved the "remote control" problem - he had just tracked
down some heavy duty Futaba motor controllers and some
wheelchair motors. This robot had a footprint about the size
of your desk chair and your feet. But it had an arm on top
that was very much like a little cherry-picker. But this poor
robot body - which had a fiberglass skin that made it look
like, o, geez, lemme think - The base part of the "Hoveround".
And it went forward by having the joystick at 45 degrees, and
just controlling the speed of the two motors (it was a caster
in front) linearly by pot. (pun semi-intended, but if you've
read this far, you're stuck, so let's go!) With speed 0 in
the middle, of course. I guess you have to cross-couple them,
or something.

Anyway, the point is that this guy had just heard of some
company just a couple of suburbs away, who were marketing
a "Butler-in-a-Box". It was a, well, box, about the size
of a, oh, textbood. Maybe a foot tall, maybe eight inches
wide, and about three inches thick, that stood upright on
the shelf, and had a mic, a speaker, and some kind of
digital display. And you could program it to accept voice
commands, and control your X10 crap. The guy who had the
one I saw in action had named it "Adam." And to demo his
Butler in a Box, he'd shout out, "Adam!" and this box would
say "Yeth, Mathter?"

Anyways, I designed an 8051 - actually, 8035, which is an
8051 with external PROM (EPROM), that would accept serial
ASCII and translate it into Futaba PWM signals. And
then, I had to make a test box, which was toggle switches
and a shift register.

We finally talked the "Butler in a box" people into
releasing enough of their control codes that we were ready
for a demo. My 8035 is faithfully accepting commands from
the voice box, and we're ready for a demo. The Boss says,
"Up". And it started moving up. The main arm of this 6-foot
tall cherry-picker arm, which just happened to have a
linear actuator that consisted of a lead screw and the
noisiest motor that there has ever been. The noise from
the leadscrew swamped the mike, so we were not able to give
the "STOP!" command, and so the motor hit the stop, the
fuse blew, and the "Butler in a Box" people threw us and
our robot out of their conference room.

That was when I started working on my voice input device,
but that's an entirely nother story.

And since I'm under the affluence o fincohol, and a little
bit of natural herb, I'm not boing to gother to proofread
this, because it would spoil the fun at this end. :-)

Maybe I should blog.


Maybe sci.electronics.design is a meta-blog! Have you ever
met a blog that you've liked? ?:-\

Cheers!
Rich




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