EEVblog #b10000000000 - 1K Micro Magic

What can you fit in 1K words of microcontroller program memory?
Dave takes a look at two old projects of his published in Electronics Australia magazine using a PIC 16F84 with 1K of program memory.
Will the assembly language code still compile first go in MPLABX after 18 years?

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[MikkelKroman]

And meanwhile you can see MPLAB taking up 3 GIGABYTES of memory.

[rickpontificates]

Popular Electronics inspired me to become an electronics designer..
When you TRY to build projects in a magazine and there’s always a part you can’t get, you learn to design around what you CAN get.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Back in the PIC16C54 days I spent many days optimising the crap out of PIC assembler - just watching that, I was starting to count all the instructions I could have saved...

[theoldwizard]

I wrote assembly code for engine controls (pre-fuel injection) for one of the Detroit 3 back in 1978. We had a very "advanced" microprocessor for its day. 12 bit address/data/instruction plus hardware multiply and divide. I think it was the only chip out there at the time that had those 2 math functions.

[MichaelLloyd]

Pretty impressive that Microchip still supports code and chip types from the late 90's

[ScottLahteine]

Thanks! Seeing content like this inspires me to show off some of the stuff I was doing back in the late 80's and early 90's with 6502 on the Atari and 680x0 assembler on the Amiga… Lest we forget!

[StreuB]

YouTube just suggested this video and I couldn't be happier. This was great!

[Manawyrm]

Very cool project! Thanks for showing :)
These projects have made a revival these days as OSD for quadcopter-pilots, still using analogue PAL video :)

[OgKafrizel]

So your retro pc teardown brought me to your channel and ive been watching ever since. 1024, wow man. Keep on keepin on man.

[PeterNield]

Long ago, I had the EA issue with the article on "How to build fission bomb", which did state the difficulties in such an endeavor, like obtaining and safely handling fissile material . Ah, the good old days...

[SimoWill]

It still kills me that Electronics Australia mag got ruined by Graham Cattley. 79 years of publication. If I ever meet that guy....

[steveellis]

Oh this brings back some memories! My first Micro-controller project was a self setting digital clock that received the time and date from the MSF time signal transmitted on 60kHz from (in those days) Rugby in the UK. I remember also butting up against the memory limit and having to refine my code in order to get everything to fit! The receiver was re-purposed from a "radio controlled" RS analog time piece and had six 7-segment LED displays multiplexed by a 4017 decade counter. I still have that clock but I re-visited my old project using an ATMega328p which is displaying happily (and rather accurately) on my desk as I type. Loved this vid!

[peterdkay]

You brought home memories using UPPER CASE for assembly. I grew up with the Intel family (8080, 8085, 8748 and 8051) all programmed in UPPER CASE assembler. It just did not look good in lower case! I had similar problems as you with the 8748 chip which only had 2kB of UV-EPROM. I used to spend days trying to save a bytes so a complete taximeter could fit into the 2kB limit. Never again!

[siliconrobot]

Great project with minimum resources. In these beautifull old days people used to be very creative and very "optimization" oriented.

[FirChif]

Mighty impressive Dave! Can't say I've every done anything in 1K of memory. Quite the opposite in fact, I'm a web application programmer!

[alecjahn]

It's always interesting to see your old projects like this. Thanks for sharing! Keep it up.

[ThunderSqueak]

I remember all my friends being really into basic stamp while I was learning to use the pic16F84, That chip helped give me lots of great memories learning assembler :). Great video :)

[blandman]

Terrific video. I wasn't so interested in the (now artificial, then real) 1K programming constraint so much as the broader matter of revisiting old designs, understanding the constraints at the time, and exploring the solutions. It used to be we would hear about how much you could learn from designs fifty years ago. That's still true, but the same goes now for designs from less than 20 years ago too. I enjoy your teardowns and reviews, but speaking for myself: More videos, please, about your actual designs!

[grantrennie]

I remember your project from 1999 I got that in the uk am sure it was a magazine called epe everyday practical electronics, I can actually remember reading your stuff way back then

[ryanedison]

You really had the power to make this video byte didn't you.... Congrats on the your 1KB video!