who programmed the first microcontroller?

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dragonuv
 
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who programmed the first microcontroller?

Post by dragonuv »

if it takes a microcontroller to program a microcontroller, then how was the first microcontroller programmed?

magician13134
 
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Re: who programmed the first microcontroller?

Post by magician13134 »

Well, some microchips are designed for a very specific purpose, like perhaps programming a microchip... The first microchips were made by Jack Kilby at TI ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kilby ) and Robert Noyce from Failchild ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Noyce ). As far as actual programming, though, I'm unsure about that...

dragonuv
 
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Re: who programmed the first microcontroller?

Post by dragonuv »

so jack kilby and robert noyce were building a microchip and since then everytime a microcontroller is need to be programmed they use their's microchip? (or at least chips that were programmed indirectly by them?)

and how was that first microchip programmed if it was the first one?

Stoney3K
 
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Re: who programmed the first microcontroller?

Post by Stoney3K »

dragonuv wrote:so jack kilby and robert noyce were building a microchip and since then everytime a microcontroller is need to be programmed they use their's microchip? (or at least chips that were programmed indirectly by them?)

and how was that first microchip programmed if it was the first one?
Not all microchips run actual code. A microcontroller is a small microprocessor with a bit of ROM and RAM, essentially a computer in a small package. In the early days, chips were "hard-wired" as ASIC's and printed on silicon dies by lithography. This is how the first home and personal computers were built -- those are comparable to today's big microcontrollers. The Zilog Z80, a popular processor in the 1980's (used in the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 128) is still used today in many projects. ROM, RAM and CPU were separate chips on the board and the code was hard-coded in the ROM. An example of a chip not "running code" is the 74xxxx or 4xxx series of logic circuits, which are nothing but buffers or AND, OR, NOT and XOR gates.

Today, microcontrollers contain Flash EPROM's which are similar to ROMs but can be erased, so new code can be loaded into them. Classic ROMs (with lithographed data or programmed through OTP) are still being used in some products, though, especially in mass produced hardware.

mtbf0
 
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Re: who programmed the first microcontroller?

Post by mtbf0 »

with adequate reserves of time and patience, i bet you could program an avr with a bunch of toggle switches. kind of like dialing a phone by tapping the hook switch.

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westfw
 
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Re: who programmed the first microcontroller?

Post by westfw »

You don't need a microcontroller to program a microcontroller. Back when transistors were bigger, people used to build entire computers out of smaller integrated circuits. Or transistors. Or tubes.
The early microcontrollers programmed in parallel modes, and could indeed be programmed with an appropriate set of switches and relatively simple electronics. The first microcontrollers pretty much post-dated the first microcomputers, so most of the early schematics for non-microcontroller based programmers are likely to connect to a PC parallel port or similar. The first "Flash" microcontroller (Microchip PIC16c84) appeared in 1993; quite late in the big scheme of things...

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ran talbott
 
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Re: who programmed the first microcontroller?

Post by ran talbott »

dragonuv wrote:if it takes a microcontroller to program a microcontroller
Oh, but it doesn't: many of the early micros ran off external program ROM, or had on-chip (E)PROM that was programmed with a PROM programmer.

One of the interesting early chips was the RCA 1802, which has a strange "bootstrap" mode that allows ou to dial in your code a byte at a time thorugh switches (or even, if you were really bold/rich, a hex keypad). That made it really popular with hobbyists, because you could build and program your own computer from scratch, without needing to find someone with an expensive PROM programmer to make you some sort of boot PROM.

Ran

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westfw
 
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Re: who programmed the first microcontroller?

Post by westfw »

Oh, back in the days when 1K was a lot of memory, and micros had "external memory" for all their code storage, a LOT of the systems has switches to load programs into memory (You just flipped the bit on the micro that said "give me control of the bus", and drove the address and data lines of the memory directly.) What did you THINK all those switches on the front panel of the early S100 systems were for? Even mini-computers of the day (PDP-11) would have front panel switches with similar capabilities, and if really bad things happened, you would have to key in a bootstrap using just the switches. (The heavy-duty hackers of the day would have the process and code memorized...) I never had to do that, but I HAVE loaded a blinky light program on an 8080-based S100 system via the switches...
The 1802 had some hardware built into the CPU so that you could do this more easily (autoincrement address bus, plus some other things, IIRC.)
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opossum
 
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Re: who programmed the first microcontroller?

Post by opossum »

The 1802 has built in DMA. The load mode just resets the DMA pointer to 0 and halts the CPU.

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westfw
 
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Re: who programmed the first microcontroller?

Post by westfw »

BTW, if you want to try out some of those old computers, there are simulators...
http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bill_r/comp ... lators.htm

dragonuv
 
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Re: who programmed the first microcontroller?

Post by dragonuv »

thanks everyone :) great info you gave here

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