For an upcoming Project14 how about a 1K MCU challenge. Essentially any idea is allowed but must include a single 8-bit microcontroller using no more than 1KByte of program memory/internal flash. No other external flash or program storage is allowed but you can use as much of the data memory/non-volatile RAM as you want. Therefore the Arduino Uno could be used if members want to test out their C skills; but some will just jump into assembler with their favourite MCU.
Along a similar track we could also have an Eight Pin MCU challenge (or 6 pin even !). e.g. using a device that has only 8/6 pins in total.
In the late 70s I designed an echo sounder for pleasure boats, based around an Intel 8048 - 8bit, 1K of RAM, one time programmable chips (at first). It went into commercial production.
My heart sank when the company asked for a couple of extra features - I spent hours going through the code until I found a few adjustments that saved a handful of bytes and allowed me to shoehorn in the tweaks.
Your echo sounder is the ideal project entry. Sounds like you did a good job of the changes as well.
As an aside I've recently seen code routinely using a 4-byte unsigned integer to hold a boolean value...then again it was for the x86-64 which had 8GByte of RAM. Old school would have utilised every single bit separately.
I'm not sure it would qualify, being nearly 40 years old!!
Main problem would be lack of evidence: several house moves mean that my archives have been progressively thinned. I know I still have a printout of the source code for a later model - targeted at an 8051 or 8052. I may also have some of my old development log books - I need to look. I also have a few sample chips and parts of my development rig. However, what I don't have are any working examples of the echo sounder and later models - wind speed and log.
I'm not sure it would qualify, being nearly 40 years old!!
Main problem would be lack of evidence: several house moves mean that my archives have been progressively thinned. I know I still have a printout of the source code for a later model - targeted at an 8051 or 8052. I may also have some of my old development log books - I need to look. I also have a few sample chips and parts of my development rig. However, what I don't have are any working examples of the echo sounder and later models - wind speed and log.
Top Comments