If you have an 8748 among your miscellaneous devices, and wish to use it, there's a pretty useable IDE with editor, simulator, and assembler, written by Michael McCarrick, that I've used to help youngsters like yourself turn what's otherwise junk into perfectly functional devices. You will need a capable programmer, though, as I don't recommend attempting to build a parallel programmer for them.


If you have the means with which to program these parts, then you'll have fewer parts to wire than if you use separate EPROM/FLASH and I/O devices. Note that the 8755 i/o works somewhat differently than the 8255.



There's quite a bit that you can learn about digital electronics, and about the discipline of programming, which is often lacking, by breathing life back into some of these old parts. Unfortunately, you'll have little experience useful with current-generation I/O techniques when you're done. Today's stuff uses SPI, I2C, and other interfaces that weren't used back then, and the parallel methods used when the 8048 and early 805x's were popular, are unpopular today for a number of reasons that will become obvious.

The 8048 series, BTW, used I/O features, while 805x types don't support any I/O instructions. When you start messing around with both MCU types, the impact of this will become apparent.

RE