Design of Embedded Systems Using 68HC12/11 Microcontrollers

Rating:
Summary: A New Text for learning about the Motorola 68HC12 processor
Review: I spent some considerable time reviewing available texts which cover the HC12 processor and found this text by Richard Haskell to be excellent!

I was looking for a text to use for an introductory microprocessor lecture and lab course which I had to teach at a local University. I ultimately chose the Haskell text. The book expects some very introductory background on microprocessors -- you need to know what one is, the fetch execute cycle etc. -- the kind of material you might expect to find included at the end of an intro to Logic I course. I developed some of my own intro notes for the first two weeks, and then was able to move fully to the text.

I chose the text because of it's clear and intuitive style. Dr. Haskell does an admirable job of making complex topics plain -- a feature that the students really appreciated. I also chose the text because it introduced HC12 assembly language programming by developing a complete FORTH based interactive development system (called WHYP FORTH by the author). All code is provided for free (on an included floppy), and an associated web site provided different code versions, to target different HC12 processor configurations. I was very impressed with WHYP FORTH, and the interactive development provided. The book also provides a number of lab projects: controlling LED and Liquid Crystal displays, keyboard interfacing, and the design of a digital compass for examples. My students concluded their lab with the construction and programming of a complete robot system. The code generated was much tighter that some C compilers I have used, and executed very quickly. Additionally, the time spent developing complex code in WHYP was much shorter than in assembly. Also, the code was more structured and modular than equivalent C code.

Overall, I found this to be an excellent text.

Rating:
Summary: Design of Embedded Systems Using 68HC12/11 Microcontrollers
Review: This book is very detailed I would recommend to for anyone from beginner to expert