Author: John Mulindi
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Interfacing LEDs & Electromechanical Relays to Microcontrollers
In this article, we briefly describe how to interface LEDs and electromechanical relays to microcontrollers. Note, a detailed description on how this is done can be found in the official documentation of the microcontroller you are working with. Here, we only look at the fundamentals on how this is done. Interfacing LEDs with Microcontrollers The…
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The Intel 8085 Microprocessor
The 8085 Microprocessor is one of the most popular microprocessors. In this article we look at some of the basic features and pin-out configuration of this microprocessor. The block diagram of the 8085 microprocessor is shown below: 8085 Microprocessor Registers The 8085 microprocessor registers include an 8-bit accumulator, an 8-bit flag register (five 1-bit flags,…
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Device Programmers for PIC Microcontrollers
Once the program is written and translated into executable code, the resulting HEX file is loaded to the target microcontroller’s program memory with the aid of a device programmer. The type of device programmer depends on the type microcontroller to be programmed. For instance, some device programmers can only program PIC16 series, whereas some can…
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4 Types of Processor Architectures
Processor architecture can be classified as one of the following four architectures: Accumulator-Based Processor Architecture In the accumulator-based processor architecture, illustrated above, instructions begin and end in accumulators (Acc A and Acc B), which are specially designated registers. In a typical operation, one of the operands is found in the accumulator and the other is…
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Basic Architecture of a Microprocessor
The microprocessor is typically referred to as the central processing unit (CPU). It is the part of the processor system which processes the data, fetching instructions from memory, decoding them and executing them. The internal structure (architecture) – depends on the microprocessor concerned. The figure below illustrates a general architecture of a microprocessor: The following…
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How Special Function Registers (SFRs) are Mapped into Memory Space
There are two basic primary architectures used for mapping special function registers into memory space. In the first type of arrangement, I/O space and memory space are separated as illustrated in Figure 1.0. The I/O devices have a separate address space, which is accomplished by either an extra I/O pin on the CPU physical interface…
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Basic Features of a Microprocessor-Based System
The microprocessor is the heart of a microcomputer system and can be described as a programmable device that accepts binary data from an input device; then processes the data according to the instructions stored in the memory and provides results as output. That is to say, the microprocessor executes the program stored in the memory…
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Computer Number Systems
Being familiar with number systems is important as it helps you comprehend how data is represented before it can be processed by any digital system including a digital computer. In this article, we look at the most commonly applied number systems in computer systems such as the binary, octal, and hexadecimal number systems. Introduction to…
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The Difference between a Simulator and an Emulator
A simulator is software that runs on a PC and allows the microcontroller code to be simulated (run) on the PC. Many programming errors can be identified and corrected during simulation. An emulator is hardware that connects a PC to the microcontroller in a prototype mechatronic system. It typically consists of a printed circuit board…