Single-board microcontroller: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 12:22, 28 January 2013

Revision as of 07:34, 19 May 2013

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}}</ref> made it practical to build an entire controller on a single board, and affordable to dedicate a computer to a relatively minor task.

In March 1976, [[Intel]] announced a single-board computer product that integrated all the support components required for their [[8080]] microprocessor, along with 1 kbyteskbyte of RAM, 4 kbytes of user-programmable ROM, and 48 lines of parallel digital I/O with line drivers. The board also offered expansion through a bus connector, but it could be used without an expansion card cage where applications didn't require additional hardware. Software development for this system was hosted on Intel's [[Intellec MDS]] microcomputer development system; this provided assembler and PL/M support, and permitted [[in-circuit emulation]] for debugging.<ref>http://www.dvq.com/docs/intel_sbc_80_10.pdf {{Dead link|date=May 2012}} Intel Single Board Computer datasheet, 1975</ref> <!-- Deadlink Note: is http://www.nj7p.info/Common/Manuals/PDFs/Intel/142927-004.pdf the same thing? -->

Processors of this era required a number of support chips in addition. [[RAM]] and [[EPROM]] were separate, often requiring memory management or refresh circuitry for [[Dynamic random access memory|dynamic memory]] as well. I/O processing might be carried out by a single chip such as the [[8255]], but frequently required several more chips.