30 years later: The revival of my old 80535 microcontroller board

Over 30 years ago, I was working on a small project with a friend. We wanted to build an inverted pendulum similar to the one we had admired at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Unfortunately, the project was never finished and since then the microcontroller board has been lying around in a box at my parents' house until it was finally completely forgotten. On my last visit, however, it fell into my hands again and suddenly a question arose that wouldn't let me go: Does it still work?

The board is now at my place in Vienna and I've spent the last few evenings getting familiar with it. Funnily enough, I can't remember in the slightest where this board actually came from. Did I buy it, or did my father? But he can't remember either. Did I solder it together? A blackout like this is almost a little worrying.

The 80C535-Compuboard

Unfortunately, there was also no printed documentation such as books or magazines, at least I couldn't find any. Another mystery. Where did I get the information from back then? The Internet was not yet an option in 1992. Even today, information about it is very limited on the web. At least I found out that it was a project of the magazine Elektor, which was published in issue 9/92.

A look at the board shows its most important features:

• Siemens SAB-80C535-N Microcontroller
• HY62256ALP 32Kx8bit CMOS SRAM
• M27C256B 256 Kbit EPROM
• 12Mhz clock
• RS-232 interface

The SAB-80C535-N from Siemens is an 8-bit microcontroller from the 8051 family. Introduced in 1983, it is an enhanced version of the 8051, which was introduced by Intel in 1980. The main features are:

• 256 byte on-chip RAM
• External program and data memory expandable up to 64 Kbyte each
• Six 8-bit parallel I/O ports
• One input port for digital input
• Full-duplex serial port, 4 modes of operation, fixed or variabie baud rates
• Three 16-bit timer/counters
• 16-bit reload, compare, capture capability
• A/D converter, 8 multiplexed analog inputs, programmable reference voltages
• 16-bit watchdog timer
• Idle and power-down mode
• Power-down supply for 40 byte of RAM
• Boolean processor
• 256 directly addressable bits
• 12 interrupt sources (7 external, 5 internal), 4 priority levels
• Stack depth up to 256 byte
• Most instructions execute in 1µs (750 ns) at 12-MHz operation
• 4 µs multiply and divide
• Compatible with standard SAB 8080/8085 peripherals and memories

The following table shows a comparison with the now somewhat outdated ESP32 DevKit C V4 board from Espressif: 

First test

A very important question arose right at the beginning. What supply voltage does the board need? The data sheet for the 80535 states -0.5 to 6.5 V. As there is apparently no voltage regulator on the board, I simply tried 5 volts.

But there was still a problem. The board only has an RS 232 interface. They haven't been available on modern PCs for years. However, it was state of the art back then; the USB standard was only introduced in 1996. But there are USB to serial adapters for cases like this, so I ordered one of those.

Now it got serious. To monitor the serial interface, I used the Serial Monitor of the PlatformIO IDE. So, I connected the board to the power supply, connected the USB adapter, and pressed the reset button. And... nothing happened. I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed at that moment. Then, I checked the baud rate. It was set to 115200 baud, which was way too high for such an old board. So, I set it to 9600 baud, which was a fairly common value back then. Pressed the reset button again. And lo and behold!

At least there's some activity on the serial port now. I've also tried it at 4800 baud.

Unbelievable. After 32 years, the board still works. At that moment, I actually had a bit of a racing heart. It's far from guaranteed that the hardware isn't damaged after so many years. The electrolyte of the capacitors could have leaked by now, or some bits of the EPROM could have flipped.

import serial
import time
import sys
import msvcrt


# Functions for communication via the serial port
def sndbyt(ser, byte):
    while ser.out_waiting > 0:
        time.sleep(0.001)  # Wait until the buffer is empty
    ser.write(bytes([byte]))


def getbyt(ser):
    if ser.in_waiting > 0:  # Check whether data is available in the receive buffer
        return ser.read(1)[0]  # Read and return the received byte
    else:
        return None  # Return None if no byte is present


def setcom(ser, speed):
    # Change baud rate
    ser.baudrate = speed

    # Change parity
    ser.parity = serial.PARITY_NONE

    # Change data bits
    ser.bytesize = serial.EIGHTBITS

    # Change stop bits
    ser.stopbits = serial.STOPBITS_ONE

    # Apply configurations
    ser.apply_settings(d={})


# Main function for file transfer
def download(ser, fname, intel):
    print("DOWNLOAD OF:", fname)
    try:
        hex_f = open(fname, 'r')
    except FileNotFoundError:
        print("ERROR: FILE", fname, "NOT FOUND")
        return

    for line in hex_f:
        if line.strip():  # Check that the line is not empty
            print("<<", line.strip(), ">>")
            ok = down_line(ser, line.strip(), intel)
            print('.')
            if not ok:
                print("ERROR DOWNLOADING FILE!")
                return

    print("FILE TRANSFER COMPLETED")
    ser.write(b'\r')  # Forces an EMON51 prompt
    hex_f.close()

def down_line(ser, line, intel):
    error = False
    ack = 6

    if not intel:
        sndbyt(ser, ord('h'))  # Sending the 'h' command to EMON51
        received = get_in_time(ser)
        if received == ack:  # Waiting for the ACK byte from EMON51
            for ch in line:
                sndbyt(ser, ord(ch))  # Sending the remaining line
            sndbyt(ser, ord(' '))  # Sending a trailing space to end the hexadecimal number
            if get_in_time(ser) != ack:  # Waiting for a new ACK
                error = True
        else:
            error = True
    else:
        for ch in line:
            sndbyt(ser, ord(ch))  # Send each character of the line
    return not error


def get_in_time(ser, timeout=1000):
  start_time = time.time()
  while time.time() - start_time < timeout / 1000:
    if ser.in_waiting:
      return ser.read(1)[0]
  return -1

# Main function for V24 communication
def do_v24(ser, intel):
    filename = None
    esc_key = 27  # ASCII code for ESC
    ctrl_f_key = 6  # ASCII code for CTRL+F
    ctrl_d_key = 4  # ASCII code for CTRL+D

    while True:
        # Display received data
        while ser.in_waiting:
            received_byte = ser.read(1)[0]
            sys.stdout.write(chr(received_byte))
        sys.stdout.flush()

        # Check for key press
        if msvcrt.kbhit():
            inbyt = ord(msvcrt.getch())

            # Handle input
            if inbyt == esc_key:
                print("ESC key. Exiting...")
                break  # Exit loop on ESC

            elif inbyt == ctrl_f_key:
                filename = input("Enter filename: ")
                print("Start download with CTRL+D...")

            elif inbyt == ctrl_d_key:
                if filename is not None:  # Check if filename exists before calling download
                    download(ser, filename, intel)  # Start download
                else:
                    print("No filename entered.")

            else:
                sndbyt(ser, inbyt)

def main():
    fname = ""
    com_adr = "COM1"
    no_dialog = False
    exit_code = 0
    v24_speed = 4800
    intel = False

    # Parameter handling
    for arg in sys.argv[1:]:
        arg = arg.upper()
        if arg.startswith("-COM"):
            com_adr = arg[1:]  # Removes the "-" from the argument
        elif arg == "-1200":
            v24_speed = 1200
        elif arg == "-2400":
            v24_speed = 2400
        elif arg == "-4800":
            v24_speed = 4800
        elif arg == "-9600":
            v24_speed = 9600
        elif arg == "-NODIALOG":
            no_dialog = True
        elif arg == "-INTEL":
            intel = True
        else:
            fname = arg

    # Open serial interface
    ser = serial.Serial(com_adr, v24_speed, timeout=1)

    if intel:
        print("INTEL HEXFILE mode")

    # Setting the COM parameters
    setcom(ser, v24_speed)

    if no_dialog:
        download(ser, fname, intel)
    else:
        do_v24(ser, intel)

    ser.close()
    sys.exit(exit_code)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

python v25com.py -COM10 -4800

This example was also a good opportunity to measure the power consumption of the 80535 board with my new Power Profiler Kit II. The following image first shows the upload, the peaks correspond to the "ACTIVE" output in the terminal and then the 80535 goes into power-down mode.

The board therefore normally consumes around 220 mA, in power-down mode the value drops to 155 mA. For comparison, an ESP32 consumes only 15 µA in deep sleep mode.

Hello World with the Keil C compiler for 80535

Finally, I also wanted to write my own program for the 80535 compuboard. Not in assembler, however, but in C. I compiled my programs at the time with the Keil C compiler. The Keil company has been part of ARM since 2004, but the compiler still exists. So I downloaded and installed the test version of Keil µVision. The program looks a bit antiquated, but it does the job.

At first I had some problems starting the program. The reason was the memory structure of the board. After a bit of research, I found out how the ROM and RAM are divided up on this board:

ROM  0x0000 – 0x3FFF
RAM  0x4000 – 0x7FFF
ROM  0x8000 – 0xBFFF
RAM  0xC000 – 0xFFFF

The program was only assigned to the correct code segment after the compiler had been configured correctly. To do this, line

                CSEG    AT      0

in the STARTUP.A51 file must be changed to

                CSEG    AT      4000H

This tells the compiler that the code segment on this board starts at 0x4000.

The Keil compiler generates programs in Intel HEX format, so this time the upload program must be started with the -INTEL option:

python v25com.py -COM10 -INTEL 4800

The video shows the whole process again:

This proves that the board is still fully operational. I would have liked to write a more complex program, but the test version of the compiler is very limited and only allows very small programs.  

Conclusion

The past few evenings have been incredibly exciting for me and actually make me want more. However, the board also has a major disadvantage. The programs are always stored in RAM, which means that as soon as the power supply is switched off, they have to be uploaded again. This limits the practical use considerably, as there is neither a buffer battery nor flash memory or similar options. Nevertheless, the process of getting from a completely unknown board to a functioning C program was extremely interesting and instructive.