Sonicdh:
So, like the topic name says, I picked up a tube of 8051 microcontrollers at a thrift shop for cheap. I've only ever worked with Arduinos so I'm not quite sure how to proceed. I now have 1 AT89C51RC and three P89C51RD2HBP's and no idea what to do with them. I read the data sheet and I see that I can program them via their serial ports, but is there an Arduino IDE equivalent for them? More to the point, how do I even hook them up? Do they need an external crystal? Can I re-purpose and Arduino UNO board (without the arduino chip) to communicate with them?
I started working on a Arduino compatible 8051 board and IDE. The IDE was based on Pinguino, I was able to get basic digitalWrite then paused the development. GitHub - codelectron/Neo51-IDE: Neo51-IDE is an 8051 IDE ported from pinguino which adapts the syntax of arduino.
Krishna