Dear Andy,

If you are not specific about some other microcontroller than I will suggest you that you choose 8051. There are a lot of advantages which you will experience during your learning curve and in future as well.

8051 is primarily developed by intel but now many other manufacturers are in the market with their own 8051, with some additional features, we called them derivatives. Phillips, Dallas and Atmel are the most popular manufacturer for their 8051 derivative designs. I personally like Atmel because of their two products, which help a lot for begineers. one is AT89C2051 and other one is AT89C52. 89C2051 comes in 20pin DIP package, size is as small as any 20 pin chip. It has only 15 I/O lines whereas original 8051 has 32 i/o lines. so you can use this where you do not require so many i/o lines, it is cheaper by cost and save space on pcb. The 89C52 is just like any 8051 but beauty is its Flash 8K programm memory space. Usually you will find One time programable (OTP) chips, where you can program the memory just one time, and if your code works! you are lucky otherwise through this away and take another chip. 89C2051 also has 2K Flash ROM and you can program them a thosand times.

You must do few things to start with:
1- down load tutorials from 8052.com site.
2- down load informations about 8051 and 8052 from Intel website.
3- down load informations about 89C2051 and 89C52 from Atmel site.
4- Make a programmer for 89C2051 or 89C52. Or buy it readymade, it might cost you from US$35 to US$150, depends upon supplier and features. I paid US$35 to get my first 89C2051 programmer from some company in Hongkong.
5- download a evaluation simulator from 8052.com site, when you like it please purchase it. when you run your code with Simulator, it will show you many windows, shows Timers, PSW, Internal Ram etc on screen, so you can see your code running and effecting different parts of internal parts of cpu.
6- Download Metalink's compiler from metalink's site.
6- Go through nemonics of assembly language instructions.
7- try to built simple codes by your self, for example, MOV A,#0AAh etc.
8- compile it with the compiler and run the hex file (generated by compiler) in simulator. you will see your code running on screen.
9- If you think you understand the terminologies used in this subject, try to read Myke Predko's book, "programming and customizing 8051". I got this book from amazon.com, costs only US$39.00 or may be less. It is wonderful book, comes alongwith CD contains a lot of source and sample codes. The book itself is well written.
10- Write a letter of thanks to this website owner.

I think the above 10 steps will brings you into 8051 world, safe and sound.

Rauf / Microlink