Help needed for programming of microcontrollers and associated chips.

In article , adam wrote: [....]

Here it is don't miss any steps. Once you become experienced, you can start combining steps.

(1) Write a vague description of what you are trying to make the programmed part do. Don't worry about details just get the titles for all the big ideas down on paper.

(2) Review the description and often throw sections away and start again. Ask your self "could a complete idiot understand this?" and "could a smart person find a way to misunderstand this?".

(3) Write a more detailed specification of what you are trying to do. This should be written in a format with no more than about 73 characters per line so that it can be turned into comments easily. Use a very simple text editor. Don't write any code at this point.

(4) Break the problem down into smaller parts. Start looking at things like how many bits are needed in your numbers. At this point you should be writing stuff in the form of comments for the source code. It isn't too hard to convert comments from one language to another.

(5) Break those parts down further. Carefully re-examine issues like how many bits are needed for values. About here is where you should start thinking about what language you will use.

(5A) Look at any obvious looping sections and ask "if this takes one machine cycle per loop will it take the entire life of the universe to complete". If so, you are in trouble already.

(6) Determine how each step in the processing can be done and perhaps start writing some code.

(6A) Repeat the (5A) check for any new loops you see.

(7) Go back a re-read the vague description you started with and compare it with the now detailed stuff. Make sure that you have gone astray.

(8) Write source code for some of the subsections and code to test those subsections. Start with the things you are least sure of.

(9) Now you need a compiler. Turn on all the warnings that the compiler has and feed your source code in.

(10) Fix everything that the compiler warned you about.

(11) Compile and link a test program. You need the compiler and linker.

(12) If you are using an emulator, load the code into it. If not perhaps you need to program a part. If so you will need the "hex" format that the porgrammer needs and the programmer.

(13) Run the test code and see what doesn't work.

(14) Figure out what you did wrong.

(15) Fix the mistakes and repeat from (11)

(16) Add more stuff to the program and repeat from (11)

(17) Compare what you have to what you want and if needed repeat from (1)

Run a simple terminal program on the PC. Hyperterminal is free but nearly imposible to use. Procomm, Commo, Microcom, and Picocom are all simple programs.

You can verify that you can work the program by linking two PCs together and typing stuff back and forth.

Now just make your 8051 code output plain ASCII text for what you want to display.