Look for a microprocessor trainer

Hi to all:

I'm looking for a microprocessor trainer that I can program in assembly language, maybe C, and having a usb connection.

It would be nice to have a hex keypad on the board as well. I'm familiar with the 68hc11 and the Z80, 8085, etc...Maybe want to make a step up.

I want to work with some of my students with this, and have the ability to tie circuits to it..Have a small breadboard on the main board of the trainer.

Thanks for the help. I've looked on the net, but haven't found anything real close to what I want.

Does Parallax make anything that can be programmed using assembly language? What is the SX-key and the SX chips all about?

Thanks for all the help,

Art

Reply to
mathtutoring
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Hi, Have a look at FREESCALE 68hc908, 9S08or 9S12 families.

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Yvan
http://www.ybdesign.fr
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Reply to
Yvan BOURNE

What about making your own board? You can find many free FPGA implementations of 8/16 bits processors on the web. You can buy an FPGA prototype board + development tools for less than $150 (e.g.

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Some examples:

6809
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8088
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8051
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6502
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Z80
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Just a thought,

Hans.

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Reply to
Hans

The Parallax company has about the best support in the business and they know a lot about education. Generally speaking their Basic Stamp products are the best for students. PIC devices have a Harvard architecture and they can be difficult to learn at the assembly level. They also have terribly small amounts of memory and some unusually odd instructions.

The SX key is just a type of ISP (in-circuit programmer). Parallax was one of the first companies to do this, but now a lot of companies do it. Freescale (formerly Morotola) has a serial monitor and a BDM and most others have JTAGs and some kind of serial programming also.

I work a lot with college professors because I make free IDEs for the Freescale 8 and 16 bit devices. These are common in colleges because they need low cost boards, and they're pretty easy to program using only open source tools. Professors like open source because they don't like to negoiate legal matters with their legal offices.

I like to recommend the Wytec company

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as a hardware supplier because they seem to give the most bang for the buck. But Technological Arts isn't bad either.

An EVB board based in the 9s12DP256 (a souped-up 68hc12) comes with a nice d-bug12 monitor (souped-up Buffalo). Or you could go with the cute little boards that use the 9s12C32 device (easy to program flash over a serial port).

But I seriously like Parallax as a company - I'm just not real happy with PIC assembly programming. However, if you decide on going with PIC you absolutely MUST get Myke Predko's book "Programming and Customizing PICmicro=AE Microcontrollers". There are no better books on PIC assembly programming and Myke is a serious expert on all the little "gotchas" of the PIC devices.=20

Eric

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Reply to
Eric

Hi Eric:

thanks so much for the tip! The Dragon 12 board looks like exactly what I'm looking for. do you know if the processor and all that comes with it? Are these boards already built and tested? I was also really looking for keypad which it comes with. That is teriffic! How much experience do you have with these boards?

I build my own small, wire wrapped board using the 68hc11E1 and really enjoyed messing around with it. I would like a little more information about the 9s12dp256...I'm assuming that it has 256k memory, and the 12 comes from the HC12 ?

Any information that you can pass on, I would really appreciate it!

Thanks,

Art

Reply to
mathtutoring

I'm mostly a PC programmer so I'm definitely not an expert on programming these boards. Its just a hobby for me.

They come fully assembled. It's a great price for what you get. Go to the Freescale website for the details on the processor. I'm going from memory here but I think it has 256K of flash (Freescale also has a 512K flash version), 2K of EEPROM, and 12K of RAM (it may be 8K RAM - but it's quite a lot).

These devices are very memory-efficient so I've never used more than 4K in my own little programs.

The devices with d-bug12 are used to develop programs that get downloaded and run from RAM. You can set breakpoints, trace, etc. But it's harder to program flash with these devices because you have to use the bootloader and overwrite d-bug12 itself with your program. Most colleges use d-bug12 because they like the debugging features and they don't need to program flash, anyway.

If you know you'll need to use flash you can use devices in the new

9s12Cxxx series because these come with a serial monitor that makes it easy to program flash. My IDEs can download programs to flash using the serial monitor but I don't support interactive debugging yet. Technological Arts has a free program called ubug12 that has some debugging support for the serial monitor.

The commercial CodeWarrior IDE is much better than mine and it comes in a free version that works with up to 8K of memory, I think.

Eric

Reply to
Eric

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low cost pic , avr and 8051 boards Boards are cheap enough for students to buy their own.

Microchip has a free student version of their c compiler for the 18f pics. Plugs into mplab

There is a gcc port for the Atmel avr chips.

To see what can be done with avrs

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Also look at

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An avr butterfly + carrier board may be suitable

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Avr butterfly

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avr gcc code for butterfly

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Reply to
Alex Gibson

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