Well, do I need this peripheral chip at all, when just experimenting in the beginning?

NO. You dont need this chip 82c55 at all to begin with (and even end with ! ). However much depends how the hardware layout of your kit and whether you can do this .

Can't I just use the I/O of the MC direcly???
Not all lines of the I/O are linked to the 82c55 !


Yes of course. And direct port pin controls are easily learnt and implemented rather than a memory mapped I/O scheme.

Of course I want to start with the basics of 8051. Is the AT89S8252 a good chip to start with???

Yes by all means. Nothing wrong with the chip if as a beginner you stick to the basic functionalities and not worry about things like SPI and on board EEPROM etc.

The problem is, that is has a manual in a language, that I can't read

I like that!! How sad..


Have you downloaded the tutorials yet ?( I mean saved them to your disk )

Raghu