Precision Measurement Central (3)

It would appear that extensive study of the datasheets is required to fully exploit the galaxy of possibilities offered by the MSC1210 family of microcontrollers. Not so for Elektor readers! In this article you will find everything you need to know to be able to make the best possible use of the 32-kB Flash memory contained in the MSC121x.At first glance the members of the MSC121x family appear to have the usual 8051 memory architecture: up to 64 kBytes of code space (program memory) and the same amount for data (RAM) may be addressed by the core. In accordance with the so called Harvard architecture, there are memory areas for code and data (Figure 1). On closer inspection we see that various types of overlap are possible with the MSC121x. Even if rarely required, these options allow the internal 1-kB RAM to be mapped into the program as well as the data memory. In this article we aim to show how the Flash memory area may be tailored to your exact requirements.