Hi all!
I am excited about learning more about the 8051. I have just purchased the book "The 8051/8052 Microcontroller: Architecture, Assembly Language, and Hardware Interfacing" from Amazon (not arrived yet). I have recently had someone build a prototype of a product for me, and they used an 8051 with assembly code. I will need to learn the assembly language to maintain it, and I have a few questions regarding 8051's in general.


1. I am in search of a simple programmer for the 8051 series. I need to be able to download a program that I compile to the chip, then pull the chip off and plug it into our test environment.

2. Are the pinouts the same on the Philips 8051 and the Atmel 8051s? In other words, if I get a programmer for Philips, will it work for Atmel as well?

3. I know C, and I also see that there are some C Compilers for the 8051 chips. Would it be easier to try and convert the code I have to C to be able to better manage the code? Are there disadvantages to using C over Assembly?


Thanks in advance so much for the advice!
Josh