Vintage HEATHKIT Question

[lasvegasmale31]

Hello everyone, I was cleaning my garage today and came across an interesting piece of equipment. It is a Heathkit ETW 3800 microprosessor trainer. It has the ETC 6811 cpu module and the ETC 128 memory module. To my surprise it still powers up. My questions are 1. Is it possible to program microcontrollers such as the 16F877A? 2. Does anyone know where I can find the manuals to this old animal?

I just don't know what to do with this thing and don't want to scrap it or get rid of it because it is vintage Heathkit and it is getting harder to find.

Let me know if it's worth using or not as my pickit2 comes on Monday!

Time to start learning!

 

[mvs sarma]

Hello everyone, I was cleaning my garage today and came across an interesting piece of equipment. It is a Heathkit ETW 3800 microprosessor trainer. It has the ETC 6811 cpu module and the ETC 128 memory module. To my surprise it still powers up. My questions are 1. Is it possible to program microcontrollers such as the 16F877A? 2. Does anyone know where I can find the manuals to this old animal?

I just don't know what to do with this thing and don't want to scrap it or get rid of it because it is vintage Heathkit and it is getting harder to find.

Let me know if it's worth using or not as my pickit2 comes on Monday!

Time to start learning!

Nice to know.These items we can keep as museum piece so that next generations would get a chance to see them. Perhaps the user manual might be right in your home library. if not Heathkit( if existing as of now) would be able to help PICKIT2 will do all your programing jobs well and no need to use this old animal.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Hello everyone, I was cleaning my garage today and came across an interesting piece of equipment. It is a Heathkit ETW 3800 microprosessor trainer. It has the ETC 6811 cpu module and the ETC 128 memory module. To my surprise it still powers up. My questions are 1. Is it possible to program microcontrollers such as the 16F877A? 2. Does anyone know where I can find the manuals to this old animal?

It will only program the device it's based on - the 6811 - nothing else.

I just don't know what to do with this thing and don't want to scrap it or get rid of it because it is vintage Heathkit and it is getting harder to find.

Let me know if it's worth using or not as my pickit2 comes on Monday!

You'll find a PICKit2 will be a LOT more useful and user friendly, things have moved on a LOT over the decades.

But don't throw it away, it's an interesting item.

 

[Ubergeek63]

if it's the one I had it does not program anything, you had to enter the program into the memory using the hex keypad every time. That was, admitedly, over 30 yrs ago.

Dan

 

[lasvegasmale31]

It's probably the same one. It does have the hex keypad. I got mine from school when they upgraded to newer equipment ages ago and to be honest I don't know why i took it, lol.

Anyway, Thanks for all the input. My PicKit2 arrives Monday via Fedex, and I already have 4 16F877 controllers and 4 HD44780 displays. I am looking forward to learning the world of microcontrollers. I have been reading this forum for a while and am getting pretty excited to see what these things are capable of. I also intend on using the resources on Nigels site and the microchip site. I am a little daunted by the fact I have to learn "C", but I am sure it will come in time.

Any pointers for a fellow electronics junkie, let me know.

P.S. I don't have a book on "C", but I do have one on "C+", are there major differences? Should I go get the standard "C" book?

 

[kchriste]

I am a little daunted by the fact I have to learn "C", but I am sure it will come in time.

You don't have to learn C if you don't want to. All Nigel's tuts are in assembler.

 

[Leftyretro]

You don't have to learn C if you don't want to. All Nigel's tuts are in assembler.

And you consider PIC assembly language less daunting then C ?

Lefty

 

[kchriste]

In some ways yes and others no. I've got to admit I hated PIC assembler after programming the sexy 6809 and other Moto processors. Bank switching and lookup tables in Harvard architecture CPUs are just ugly in my mind. But the powerful bit manipulation instructions on the PIC make up for it and playing with the destination bit can be fun.
All in all, a good grounding the assembler puts you in touch with the soul of the machine in a way that no high level language can. However, larger programs are easier in C as opposed to assembler.
Learning both is a good compromise.

 

[lasvegasmale31]

Good advice.....but where should i start...assembler, basic, or c?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

And you consider PIC assembly language less daunting then C ?

Greatly so!

 

[lasvegasmale31]

I don't have a book on "C", but I do have one on "C+", are there major differences? Should I go get the standard "C" book?

I think i'll dabble in both assembler and c to figure out which i am more receptive to as everyone has personal preferences, but i would like an answer to the above question if you gents don't mind.

 

[futz]

P.S. I don't have a book on "C", but I do have one on "C+", are there major differences? Should I go get the standard "C" book?

C++ is a superset of C. Anything you learn in a C++ book, aside from the object-oriented (OO) stuff, is C. Put another way, C++ is just C with OO added on. So C would probably be pretty much just the first few chapters of a C++ book.

Virtually all modern (ANSI) C compilers use the new stuff (except for OO stuff) that was added when C++ added onto C.

But if you can get yourself a C-only book you won't accidently confuse yourself by crossing the line into OO. And you'll get more detailed coverage of C, as at least some C++ books will assume you already know C and will skim over it to get to the C++ stuff.

 

[lasvegasmale31]

Sweet, thanks for the info, I am very glad I joined this forum, you are all a tremendous help!