DPRG mailing list archives: DPRG: Keil update, NMI 8051 board, and other stuff...

Fri Feb 14 17:58:08 CST 1997

Talked with Keil tech support again today.  After having a meeting
or two to figure out what was causing our problems, they came to
the conclusion that the German version of the developers kit was
hosed up in more ways than just needing a dongle.  Rather than try
to figure out what needs to be fixed, they are going to send us 
a couple of U.S. Versions of the developers kit (newer code and
no dongles).  They aren't sure what they want us to do with the
3 existing German/Dongle kits yet.  I should be talking to them on
monday to figure out a time/place to pick up the new kits.  I'll
post an update next week...

Also, I decided to buy one of those $39 NMI 8031 boards (NMIY-0031).
I ordered it Monday afternoon and it showed up UPS on Wednesday.
You get a board and 3.5" disc with freeware C, ASM, BASIC, and
Forth.  I was relieved to see that, unlike NMI's 68HC11, using Forth
is optional!  On the downside, you don't get any of the extra's that
come with their more expensive boards and you have to solder jumpers
onto the board for the desired memory configuration (no jumper
blocks!).  But for $39 you can't complain - it's a bargain. Once I
get it working, I'll try some code compiled with the Keil tools. A
public domain C compiler is included with the board but it's fairly
limited - no support for structures, unions, and other ANSI C stuff.

By the way, if anyone wants to make an offer for my old 68HC11
board, it's for sale.  It's the NMIS-0021B (new price $100) with
two memory sockets (up to 32k each), one serial port, assorted
other I/O ports, printed manual, and disk.  The downside is that
NMI uses special 68HC11 chips that have Forth loaded inside them
in a special memory area.  So don't buy unless you can deal with
using Forth or unless you have the hardware to erase the internal
memory area on the 68HC11... I'll try to bring the board to the
next meeting if anyone wants a look at it.  The Forth acts as both
a monitor program and a Forth interpreter.  I'm told there is a
way to write a very simple Forth program that will load and 
execute code written in other languages but I never got around to
figuring it out.  

-Steve

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