Welcome to my 68HC11 projects page

This page is designed to help people who are interested in developing software and hardware with 68HC11. If you are experienced in electronics and 68HC11, this site will probably be boring for you. On the other hand if you are just starting with 68HC11, you may find my experience useful.

So how did I start. Quite simple - by accident. I acquired 5 68HC811E2 devices, while bidding for lot if ICs on eBay. I was not interested in the microcontrollers, but some SRAM devices in the lot. Well since I got the MCUs(1) anyway, I started looking what are they good for. Until then I was doing some small projects with Texas Instruments MSP430(2). To my surprise 68HC11 turned to be quite decent chip. I liked the possibility to extend the unit with external RAM and ROM, so the possibilities seemed infinite.

All projects described on this web site have been done on a strict budget. It is possible to obtain an "evaluation" board (EVB) which utilizes some 68HC11 part. While this will make the startup pain easier and you will be able to start cranking some test programs right away, I could not convince myself to pay $100 for such a board. Then when you have build it yourself, you know how it works - right?

Disclaimer and legal stuff.

Simple 68HC11 board project.

Extension board to add RAM and LCD...

OS like boot loader

I have a few graphics LCDs for sale (240x64 with built-in T6963c controller). E-Mail me if you are interested.

How to connect an LCD

Notes:

  1. I believe MCU stands for Micro Controller Unit as well as a bunch of other things. In this text MCU is used instead of microcontroller.
  2. MSP430 is a great controller, the CPU has 16 general purpose 16-bit registers. Unified memory (code/data and IO in the same address space) and a lot of GPIO(3) ports. Unfortunately it has two shortcomings, which made me love 68HC11: It is designed for "low power" applications and the core is 3.3v device, which is a horrible thing if the other devices you are dealing with are 5v. I comes in surface mount packages, which makes prototyping a challenging task. This is not to say it is a bad part, it is a great part if you have 3.3v circuit and small packages gives you advantage. Olimex has some quite nice boards for MSP430 - to get you started.
  3. GPIO - general purpose IO port - you will find that almost all microcontrollers have at least one of these.
  4. SRAM - static ram. The best thing about static RAM is that it doesn't need refresh, so it is easier to work with.