I have two of these DS89C420 chips which as you might have guessed where samples (along with a couple of DS232A to hook them up). With this circuit I soldered the '420 straight into the circuit if I had had some sockets laying around I would have (should have) used them so changing the IC out isn't an option.

Over all I'm happy with the way it turned out, I have a fully working 40x2 Char LCD display working flawlessly and the start of my code for fully accessing HDs (hardware part been done).

This has been my first ever do it yourself project well pretty much first for a lot of things. I've never started from scratch designed my own circuit. This is also the first project (other than a car radio install and about 50 relays on a CNC Router) where I've done any soldering (which I'm not that great at but working on it). I've never done any embedded C or ASM programming either.

I've done this project and I'm enjoying every moment of it. Just wish I could print out all of my datasheets (way too many pages).

Well I'm looking at adding external memory next, that way I can also pull a file off of the hd into external memory and execute it or edit or assemble or whatever.

Kind of interesting I see all of these posts from kids in school that won't put in any effort (or seem to have a clue whatsoever at times) but, I would love to have the opportunity to go to school and learn all about this stuff (or the opportunity just to work with this stuff period).

Guess I need to work on my FAT32 code also.