I was just informed that I was "hi-jacking" a previous thread regarding NXP's obsoleting my favorite 8051 micro. So I'll start a new thread here.

As it turns out, I am not the only person currently looking to change/explore new 8051 flavors/vendors. So maybe we can share our experiences with which 8051 flavor and vendor we are considering.

I'll start by sharing my story/process with everyone and I am open to comments/tips/suggestions...

I was kindly turned on to SiLabs. After reviewing their products, I really liked what they had to offer. After 3-days of reading tech notes/data sheets, etc., I choose the C8051F020 micro. I downloaded and printed out all 277 pages! Still impressed with it's offerings, I decided to purchase the Development kit.

I installed the SiLabs IDE, applied juice to the Dev Board and off I went. Wrote my first App, blink the LED, Detect Switch pressed, Output to the DAC and some basic Serial Port Tx/Rx data to a remote PC. All worked fine.

While not overly-impressed with the SiLabs IDE, I decided to download the KEIL DLL plugin.(offered by SiLabs). I've been using KEIL for years, and I really like it... so why not stick with it?

Well, it "kinda" worked for a short while then it kept hanging KEIL and crashing! (Keep in mind, this is Hardware Debugging via JTAG.)

I can successfully "Single-Step" through my firmware (written in C) without the JTAG interface and Keil IDE. This still allows me to examine all registers, Port I/O, Stack, etc. and verify behavior. But for using KEIL to do hardware debugging, I'm still struggling.

I can successfully "hardware debug" using the JTAG interface in the SiLabs IDE, but the IDE lacks some of the features in KEIL that I have grown acustom to using. For example, let's suppose you "think" you configured your serial port for a baudrate of 9600. In the KEIL IDE I can examine all of the *CON registers and it will display the actual BaudRate configured. (Yes, I know, this is elementry, but you get the idea...)

Single-Stepping through the C-Source in SiLabs seems a little flakey to say the least...it works, it doesn't. It's slow. It's confused.

So for now, I am leaning towards using KEIL for writting and debugging my code. I 'think' I am going to keep a copy of SiLabs IDE for Hardware debugging for now. Although not perfect, it may come in handy.

Personally, I don't care too much for hopping around multiple IDE's for development. I want one IDE for everything. But, who knows, I still have a lot to explore and hopefully I can sort through some of these little issues...???

Next thing to consider is the JTAG interface, also used for downloading my firmware. The Dev Board came with a "USB DEBUG ADAPTER". It connectes from my PC's USB to the Dev Boards JTAG interface. Right now, I am not sure I like having this adapter as my only source for downloading my firmware. I can see it now, develop a project, have it out in the field, and require my users to have this 'special' adapter to download new firmware. I can hear them screaming already!

I am used to providing a simple RS-232/USB port on my "device" that the user can connect directly to any laptop/PC and download new firmware using FlashMagic or something similar. No special harware required.

I'm sure there's something similar on the SiLabs C8051's but I have not gotten that far yet in my discovery.

For the others considering changing micro's, yes there's some homework and footwork to do. Selecting a new micro and vendor is the easy part. It's getting all the right tools to work properly that can slow the process down.

Enjoy!