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Domino 2 BASIC Microcontroller

M

Mr. Phil

Jan 1, 1970
0
I just obtained a Domino 2 Microcontroller with built in BASIC. I learned
that the company that manufactured these things (Micromint) has some
documentation on their website showing schematics for interfacing a MAX232,
LCD display, and matrix keyboard, but the programming examples for setting
up the I/O are sparce and confusing. Has anyone had experience working with
these modules before?

How can I program the I/O pins from BASIC. There are some that say they
have to be accessed through machine code. Can I just poke the values to a
certain memory location? I also want to wire up an 8255A to expand the I/O.
What would be the best way to accomplish this?

Any information anyone can provide would be appreciated. Thanks!

-Phil
 
C

CFoley1064

Jan 1, 1970
0
I just obtained a Domino 2 Microcontroller with built in BASIC. I learned
that the company that manufactured these things (Micromint) has some
documentation on their website showing schematics for interfacing a MAX232,
LCD display, and matrix keyboard, but the programming examples for setting
up the I/O are sparce and confusing. Has anyone had experience working with
these modules before?

How can I program the I/O pins from BASIC. There are some that say they
have to be accessed through machine code. Can I just poke the values to a
certain memory location? I also want to wire up an 8255A to expand the I/O.
What would be the best way to accomplish this?

Any information anyone can provide would be appreciated. Thanks!

-Phil

Hi, Phil. No direct experience here with the Domino, but I've done several
projects with the Micromint BCC-52 single-board computer. Both the Domino and
the BCC-52 are based on the Intel 8052AH-BASIC, which was made with an 8K
BASAIC interpreter built into ROM.

Intel no longer makes the chip, but Micromint got a license, and still has it
manufactured by someone else.

If you're using the Domino, or any of the Micromint 8052AH-BASIC products, you
need to find a copy of the Intel 8052AH2-BASIC Programming Manual. It's still
sold by Micromint as their P/N BASIC-52, for $34.95 USD. That will answer your
questions about setting things up in BASIC (you won't need assembly language or
an assembler).

Ideally, you would like to have the 8052 pins available to interface an 8255.
The BCC-52 has an 8255 on board, and sells an expansion board with 4 ea. 8255s
(BCC-54). However, with just the Domino I/O pins available, it's not a good
idea to try to expand this way (the 8255 has a bus-type interface, with some
timing constraints it might be difficult to implement with the slower I/O
method). You might want to try using 74HC595s and such for serial-to-parallel
conversion for extra outputs. They're more robust than the 8255s, and 3 ea.
74HC595s cost less than an 8255.

Micromint 8052AH2-BASIC products are a lot of fun, and an easy intro to using
microcontrollers. The Domino, while not being as easily expanded as the
BCC-52, have the advantage of being less expensive, and you can cobble together
a development environment in a few minutes on a perfboard with a serial cable
to your PC running a terminal program, and fire it up for around $100 USD.

Good luck.
Chris
 
M

Mr. Phil

Jan 1, 1970
0
It's too bad that the information can't be found on the web. I got these
modules for free (a friend of mine purchased them awhile ago and then
decided he was never going to use them). I just hooked up a MAX232 to one
of them and hooked it up to an old Pentium 90 laptop. I was able to program
it with some simple BASIC programs. It's neat to play with,... now I just
have to figure out the I/O so I can interface it to some real-world
applications.

Thanks for the tips regarding the 74HC595s. I'll have to look up the spec
sheets on those and see if I can work it in.

-Phil
 
M

Madis Kaal - change username to mast for mail addr

Jan 1, 1970
0
It's too bad that the information can't be found on the web. I got these
modules for free (a friend of mine purchased them awhile ago and then
decided he was never going to use them). I just hooked up a MAX232 to one
of them and hooked it up to an old Pentium 90 laptop. I was able to program
it with some simple BASIC programs. It's neat to play with,... now I just
have to figure out the I/O so I can interface it to some real-world
applications.

Domino datasheets and appnotes are here:

http://www.micromint.com/app_notes/domino.htm

BASIC-52 manuals in PDF, HTML and MS-Word format can be
found here:

http://www.nomad.ee/micros/index.shtml
 
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