what is Microcontroller Subject about?

No, you are not mastering anything. You are taking the first steps on the path to engineering, and you are taking them very badly.

Sorry to be OT for the question being asked, but what exactly are you mastering? I see this stated a lot in emails/forums/newsgroups and think there is possibly something missing in my translation.

What do you mean when you state you Mastering Computer Eng?

You can do many things, but I would ask your teacher why you are learning such a very old product, there are many better ones around, Atmel AVR, TI MSP430 for example.

martin

Now that you have opened this door, I feel obliged to add these queries:

1. Why do posts from certain regions substitute the word 'doubt' for 'question'? E.G. "I have a doubt about SPI on this mcu."

1. Why do English speakers east of about -50 deg. lon. refer to a company in the possessive as plural? E.G. "Hewlett Packard have strong tech support" instead of "Hewlett Packard has strong tech support". I've seen this as the rule and not the exception from the U.K.

Regards,

Michael

I am not english speaker and I wanted to say I am majoring or styding, but I used mastering by mistake I want to know what this subject for and thank u for the answers

In the US/Canada, the pluralness of the verb matches the subject _word_. If a collective noun is syntactically singular (e.g. The Army), then the singular verb is used. In the UK/Australia/etc. Even if the subject is singular, you use the plural noun if the subject is a singular collective noun (it refers to multiple people).

For example, there's a "Minnestoa Vikings" football team. In the us you say:

The Vikings have a good chance to win. ("Vikings" is plural) Minnesota has a good chance to win. ("Minnesota" is singular)

In the UK, both would be treated as plural and "have" would be used.

That's just the way it is.

I like larwe, brilliant :-)

Reminds me of a friend called Steve in a company I worked for 5-years ago. We used to hit each other over the head with books, this was a large open plan corporate of about 200-people. Fond memories. As you can't hit people anymore for being stupid, which is a pity really. :-)

support"

Either the American usage was a rationalisation like the spelling changes Webster introduced such as our->or and re->er or the American usage was common English usage and English has since diverged.

On no evidence at all I'd go for the former. I'd like to know the real answer though.

-p

For the benefits, ask you teacher. I do not know the context of this course in you curriculum, so I cannot answer that question.

What you can do with an 8051 is design and implement about any system that only requires an 8bit processor. For example (AFAIK) most PC keyboards are built using an 8051. Possibly your microwave oven uses an 8051 controller.

What you MIGHT learn in this subject: assemly language programming (possibly including burning your program into a PROM chip) assembly level debugging including interrupts, breakpoints, and patching. Interfacing to nondigital (analog) devices, data acquisition and analysis. digital design and development reading datasheets and understanding them. how to program without an Operating System!

Why the 8051? There are many other controllers available, though that one is still very common.

HTH, ed

A rather old processsor family with lots of derivates and tools on the market. Possibly one your teacher grew up with. There are more modern ones though.

If as student you ask for the benefit of a subject before having heard about it, you should rather consider studying something else that takes less interest, perhaps accounting and law.

Rene

I guess one reason they still use 8051 as an introduction to the world of micro-controllers is because they are easy to learn (from programming and architecture point of view) and they are not company specific like AVR (made only from Atmel). Some years ago, when I was a student, we've been taught the 8051s and then went on to more sophisticated things like ARM

I thought they were mostly 8048s - even nastier and smaller ;)

pete

No, it isn't. British English speakers would also say "The Vikings have", and "Minnesota has". In English, the plurality of the verb always matches the subject - it's not just an American thing. There will be the some variations from place to place, but anyone writing "HP have strong tech support" is not writing grammatically correct English.

People who get mixed up with their verb pluralities in this way generally do so because of differences in their native language, not the version of English they have learned. It could well be that in some languages, collective nouns (including companies) count as plural in this context. It could also be that their language makes no distinction at all - Scandinavians often make mistakes with "have" and "has", since their languages make no distinction.

You should tell that to the BBC. Their newsreaders always use plural verbs with singular collective nouns such as sports teams, corporations, and government entities.

Odd. "HP have" and "Manchester have" are the usages I always hear on the BBC. It's what I remember hearing in Englad as well. England. It's possible I heard both and only noticed the usage that was unfamiliar, but I've also read about it as one of the differences between US and British English.

Yes, but the BBC (once guardian of the English language) cannot get through a weather forecast on the radio now without referring to "bits and pieces of rain". What the hell is that supposed to mean? I would not take them as a good reference.

As he said he's in an engineering program, the particular processor used as a platform for the class is really not important - the goal is not to learn about programming an 8051, but to learn about embedded controllors in general, using a ready example.

If he were is some sort of abbreviated trade-school program, intended to teach students to "do" rather than to "think" then it might be important to target whatever processor they would soon be expected to use. Of course that might still be an 8051! Two years ago, I interviewed with a toy maker still using a 4-bit core in huge volume products...

Like about 90% of so-called 'engineering' courses these days? - particularly ones in countries to which stuff is outsourced, where 'textbook' answers and plagiarism are more widely tolerated? ;)

pete

Ah well, we aren't too proud of many of our TV "weather people" here either. ;)

You might be right! ed