What's your first microcontroller unit?

[mailus]

It's like a survey about microcontroller. It's very useful for newbie.because I am also newbie for microcontroller programming. Pls reply..i am waiting for your reply...
THANKS IN ADVANCE

 

[EXCodeX]

It's like a survey about microcontroller. It's very useful for newbie.because I am also newbie for microcontroller programming. Pls reply..i am waiting for your reply...
THANKS IN ADVANCE

For me , Its PIC16F877A

 

[sky_123]

If you mean what should a newbie use as a first microcontroller, most people will suggest AVR or PIC. Some may suggest 8051 but it is pretty ancient.

It really doesn't matter what microcontroller you use - just pick something that you can afford to get a simple development board for, and a low cost programmer and a C compiler (by all means try assembler but people don't generally code in assembler these days).
Why specialise in a particular microcontroller, (or worse still, why specialise in a particular instruction set by using assembler) if your knowledge will be obsolete when the device becomes obsolete.
If you mean what are the first microcontrollers (or microprocessors) that people have used, that depends on the age of the people responding. Some may say Z80 or 6502 or earlier...

 

[i_chaitanya]

i have been working in this domain for last 6 months
the very first controller which i used was atmel 8051
thereafter i switched to pic 16f877a and later i worked on arm 7
but generally i work on various PIC controller

 

[engshahrul]

As sky_123 said, most people will suggest AVR or PIC. It's doesn't matter you choose which one.
Go to electronic shop at your place, ask for price AVR or PIC including the programmer. Which one cheaper, maybe that is more popular at your place, then start with that microcontroller.

 

[ALERTLINKS]

PIC16F84 and 89S52

 

[tj.diego]

ATmega8535

 

[Tahmid]

Started with PIC16F84A. Then, worked with loads of microcontrollers - PIC and AVR.

 

[pjmelect]

I started with the 8080 (showing my age) but now I use the PIC16f877A.

 

[bigdogguru]

I too started with 8080 in a MITS Altair 8800.

However, my first commercial design was based on the Motorola MC6800.

BigDog

 

[Qaisar Azeemi]

Started with PIC16F84A. Then, worked with loads of microcontrollers - PIC and AVR.

i want to ask the reason for using pic16f84a form you and alertlinks. i started learning 8051 as my first microcontroller on university course level and now i am working on PIC16F877A... i think there is nothing in learning micros ... you should study the architecture and instruction set of the micro and have to get knowledge of interfacing different components with the micro. when we get complete command of any one of the brands we can easily learn the others. however it is better to learn the 89c51 first because it is the simplest one and then move on to PIC and AVR because there architecture is more complex then 89c51 and it is better to learn easy one first and then go towards complexity............

Best Regards

 

[bigdogguru]

@Qaisar Azeemi

I just want to caution you into not being lured into believing that all 8051 variants are "simple"

There are in fact 8051 variants which can out perform any 8-bit AVR or PIC currently available, both in raw performance, i.e., MIPS, and in both the range and performance of peripheral modules they offered.

Case in point, Silicon Labs C8051 variants offer up to 100 MIPS coupled with a wide range of peripheral modules, e.g., ADCs with up to 24-bit of resolution and 1 MSPS sample rates, coupled with an impressive Crossbar architecture and the convenience of a JTAG/C2 interface for programming/debugging.

My point being, while the 8051 has been around for quite some time, do not discount it's viability, it's not only alive and kicking, its leading the pack in some cases.


BigDog

 

[wp100]

I too started with 8080 in a MITS Altair 8800.

However, my first commercial design was based on the Motorola MC6800.

BigDog

Ha, beat me by a couple of years !

I started at work with the Nat Semi 'SCAMP' also used in the hobbyists diy Sinclair Mk14 computer board using machine code and a little portable cassette tape recorder to save program menory dumps.


Part III: The Intel 8080 (April 1974) . . .

The 8080 was the successor to the 8008 (April 1972, intended as a terminal controller, and similar to the 4040). While the 8008 had 14 bit PC and addressing, the 8080 had a 16 bit address bus and an 8 bit data bus. Internally it had seven 8 bit registers (A-E, H, L - pairs BC, DE and HL could be combined as 16 bit registers), a 16 bit stack pointer to memory which replaced the 8 level internal stack of the 8008, and a 16 bit program counter. It also had several I/O ports - 256 of them, so I/O devices could be hooked up without taking away or interfering with the addressing space, and a signal pin that allowed the stack to occupy a separate bank of memory.

The 8080 was used in the Altair 8800, the first widely-known personal computer (though the definition of 'first PC' is fuzzy. Some claim that the 12-bit LINC (Laboratory INstruments Computer) was the first 'personal computer'. Developed at MIT (Lincoln Labs) in 1963 using DEC components, it inspired DEC to design its own PDP-8 in 1965, also considered an early 'personal computer'). 'Home computer' would probably be a better term here, though).

Intel updated the design with the 8085 (1976), which added two instructions to enable/disable three added interrupt pins (and the serial I/O pins), and simplified hardware by only using +5V power, and adding clock generator and bus controller circuits on-chip.



Part III: SC/MP, early advanced multiprocessing (April 1976) . . . .

The National Semiconductor SC/MP (Single Chip/Micro Processor, nicknamed "Scamp") was a typical 8 bit processor intended for control applications (a simple BASIC 2.5K ROM was added to one version). It featured 16 bit addressing, with 12 address lines and 4 lines borrowed from the data bus (it was common to borrow lines (sometimes all of them) from the data bus for addressing - however only the lower 12 index register/PC bits were incremented (4K pages), special instructions modified upper 4 bits). Internally, it included four index registers (P1 to P3, plus the PC/P0) and two 8 bit registers. It had no stack pointer or subroutine instructions (though they could be emulated with index registers). During interrupts, the PC and P3 were swapped. It was meant for embedded control, and many features were omitted for cost reasons. It was also bit serial internally to keep it cheap.

The unique feature was the ability to completely share a system bus with other processors. Most processors of the time assumed they were the only ones accessing memory or I/O devices. Multiple SC/MPs (as well as other intelligent devices, such as DMA controllers) could be hooked up to the bus. A control line (ENOUT (Enable Out) to ENIN) could be chained along the processors to allow cooperative processing. This was very advanced for the time, compared to other CPUs, but the bit-serial CPU was slow (even simple instruction took 5-7 cycles, while memory access was 2 cycles, which allowed them to share a memory bus without saturating it, as opposed to a 6502 which could share memory with at most one other CPU, and only then because of the way the CPU clock was used). However this feature was almost never used for multiprocessing.

In addition to I/O ports like the 8080, the SC/MP also had instructions and one pin for serial input and one for output.

National Semiconductor eventually replaced the SCMP with the COP4 (4 bit) and COP8 (8 bit) embedded controllers, with only two index registers, but adding stack support.

 

[mailus]

Thank you for your valuable reply

 

[pasicr]

Hi colegue,
you may start with PIC or AVR, this is your choice,
but the main things is "buy proffy made pcb training board",
I realy suggested https://www.futurlec.com/PIC16F877_Controller.shtml
on this way you will avoid many problem and spare a lot of time
best regards

 

[keith1200rs]

Probably not the answer required, but my first one was a Signetics 2650!

Keith,

 

[Baas Rietrot]

My first micro was a PIC16F917. Worked a lot on various 8051's after that.

8051 is ancient but still better than some of the other small devices, SiLabs have a very nice selection of 8051's with the same internal modules as PIC's and they work faster.

 

[Bingo600]

My first .....

Was the Motorola D2 Kit
**broken link removed**

Assembler ??? ... What's that ???
We "handassembled" and entered the hexcodes directly

Whoopzz: Who's gonna beleive i'm 25 now
/Bingo

 

[thinkanish]

PIC16F84A
and I made my own JDM programmer

 

[Tahmid]

i want to ask the reason for using pic16f84a form you and alertlinks.

My dad told me to use the 16F84A to start with, since it has very limited peripherals, so I can get a hold of the very basics first. Then, I moved to 16F877A to learn about the peripherals. And from there, migrating between PICs was simple. My dad told me to avoid the 89S and 89C chips due to them being so slow and being less feature-rich than the PIC. So, had I learnt 89S or 89C chips, I would be limited in terms of being able to move to "better" microcontrollers. Whereas, if I started with the 16F84A, it would be easier to migrate to the other, more feature-rich PIC chips.