89S8252 Flash Microcontroller Board

A microcontroller board that serves as the foundation for a programming course must be easy to use while still having all the ingredients of a modern microcontroller with its peripherals. This makes such a board interesting for old microcontroller hands as well!Anyone who wants to convert his own ideas into circuitry will usually achieve the desired result more quickly with a microcontroller than with ‘conventional’ electronics. However, in many cases the programming is relatively laborious. Consequently, Elektor Electronics have developed the new Flash Board. The flash program memory and a wellconsidered system design ensure easy and fast programming.Our criteria for a new microcontroller board were based on the following objectives: the circuit to be developed should meet the needs of beginners as well as experienced users; the system should be designed from the start to handle various programming languages, including assembler, BASIC and C; and furthermore, the system should be easily extendible and easy to program. In addition, a program that has been transferred to the board should be retained when power is switched off, in order to avoid the tedious process of (re)programming EPROMs. This means that the board should also serve as a device programmer.

A few users running Windows XP Home Edition SP2 have reported problems. Apparently, unaccounted for CTS line activity occurs on the RS232 port when P1 is programmed to supply fast pulses. This causes XP to hang even if the relevant COM port is not accessed.
Also, a timing problem was discovered in the original download utilities. Both problems have been addressed and an update is available at: www.b-kainka.de/basismufaq.htm