int e l CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1.1 INTRODUCTION TO MCS BASIC-52 Welcome to MCS BASIC-52. This program functions as a BASIC interpreter occupying 8K of ROM in INTEL's 8052AH microcontroller. MCS BASIC-52 provides most of the features of "standard" BASICS, plus many additional features that apply to control environments and to the architecture of the 8052AH. The design goal of MCS BASIC-52 was to develop a software program that would make it easy for a hardware/software designer to interact with the 8052 device; but, at the same time not limit the designer to the slow and sometimes awkward constructs of BASIC. This program is not a "toy" like many of the so called TINY BASICS.
It is a powerful software tool that can significantly reduce the design time of many projects. MCS BASIC-52 is ideal for so called imbedded systems, where terminals are not attached to system, but the system controls and manipulates equipment and data. MCS BASIC-52 offers many unique hardware and software features, including the ability to store and execute the user program out of an EPROM, the ability to process interrupts within the constructs of a BASIC program, plus an accurate real time clock. In addition, the arithmetic routines and l/O routines contained in MCS BASIC-52 can be accessed with assembly language CALL routines.
This feature can be used to eliminate the need for the user to write these sometimes difficult and tedious programs. All of the above are covered in this document. This is NOT a "How to Write Basic programs" manual. Many excellent texts on this subject have been produced. Your local computer store can recommend many such texts. The descriptions of many of the statements in this manual involve rather detailed discussions that relate to interfacing MCS BASIC-52 to assembly language programs. If the user is not interested in using assembly language with MCS BASIC-52 these discussions may be ignored.
If you are only interested in programming the MCS BASIC-52 device in BASIC, you can treat all statements the same way they would be in any standard BASIC interpreter. In reading this manual, you will find that some information may he repeated two or three times. This is not an accident. Years of experience have proven that one of the most frustrating experiences one encounters with manuals is trying to find a particular piece of information that the reader knows is in the manual, but can't remember where. - 1 -