Free Forming the 44-pin PLCC Socket

DO NOT FREE-FORM THIS CIRCUIT WITH THE CHIP IN THE PLCC SOCKET. One of my old employers closed down their operation, and all us poor contractors had our contracts terminated. This meant the skip at work was very full of all the electronic bits and pieces they no longer wanted. So I helped myself to them (you can now picture me, in the rain head in a skip and my legs waving in the air!) The most useful items I got were about 30 AT89C52 Chips. These are in a PLCC configuration, so I can't use my beloved strip-board for making circuits. I had to think another way of getting them going. I ended up using a PLCC socket with the through mount holes, so the pins are far enough apart to get a soldering iron tip to them. I then rigged up the PLCC socket with the chip facing down and the pins in the air. The schematic for this basic circuit is below and works very well. The AT89C52 is a great little chip, if your program is small enough to fit on the chip, you get a double bonus, the first is that this circuit is all you need to make it run, and the second is that you get to use ALL the I/O lines for sensors, motor drivers etc. as you're not using any external program memory. The Schematic Here's the schematic, note I have coloured the P1 and P3 pins so you know where they are.

The Chip needs:

1 5v Regulated supply 1 ground connection 1 10uf Capacitor 2 33pf Capacitors 1 Crystal (the speed depends on your

chip)

1 10K or 47K resistor

The 5v supply goes to pin 44 (VCC) The ground is connected to pin 22 (GND) The resistor goes from pin 44 (VCC) to pin 35 (EA/VPP) The 10uf Capacitor goes from pin 10 (RST) to pin 44 (VCC) - make sure you put the negative side to pin 10 (RST) One 33pf Capacitor connected between pin 21 (XTAL1) and pin 22 (GND) One 33pf Capacitor connected between pin 20 (XTAL2) and pin 22 (GND) The Crystal is placed between pins 21(XTAL1) and 22(XTAL2) Why? You need power, the first two are power connections. The resistor powers the EA/VPP pin, this is the External Enable pin, if it is not powered then the I/O lines on p0 and p2 can't be used, and/or the chip will try to access External Memory to run from. Connecting this to the +5v makes the chip use it's Flash Memory for the program. The 10uf Capacitor is used to hold the reset line high, however, we don't want it to do that straight away, because the power to the system needs to stabilise first. By using a 10uf Capacitor here we get a delay between power on and the chip starting. (we're talking nanoseconds here but that is long enough) when the pin is pulled high by the capacitor being fully charged the chip resets, and starts running. You can us a bigger capacitor here, but not a smaller one. Some recommend using a resistor - to slow down the charging of the capacitor - I assume, but I didn't find it needed one. If you are using a similar but not identical chip, you might need one. If so then connect a 10K resistor between pin pin 10(RST) and pin 22(GND). This will slow the charging of the capacitor down so the power had time to stabalise. I'm using a crystal on my systems so I need 2 33pf capacitors between 21(XTAL1) and 20(XTAL2), if you use a ceramic resonator, you won't need them. Just connect

the resonator directly to pin 21(XTAL1) and 20(XTAL2), the middle pin goes to 22(GND). if your resonator doesn't have a middle pin, there is no need to connect it to GND (obviously). The crystal generates the clock cycles for the processor. The schematic below shows you the connections. The PLCC socket is facing down with the pins in the air, the chamfered corner is Top-Right. Here's a really shoddy picture of a completed one. Any questions? You can contact me here .

PIC Reset and Oscillator

Types of oscillators
PIC16F84 can

work with four different configurations of an oscillator. Since configurations with crystal oscillator andresistor-capacitor (RC) are the ones that are used most frequently,

these are the only ones we will mention here. Microcontroller type with a crystal oscillator has in its designation XT, and a microcontroller with resistor-capacitor pair has a designation RC. This is important because you need to mention the type of oscillator when buying a microcontroller.

1. XT Oscillator Crystal oscillator is kept in metal housing with two pins where you have written down the frequency at which crystal oscillates. One ceramic capacitor of 30pF whose other end is connected to the ground needs to be connected with each pin. Oscillator and capacitors can be packed in joint case with three pins. Such element is called ceramic resonator and is represented in charts like the one below. Center pins of the element is the ground, while end pins are connected with OSC1and OSC2 pins on the microcontroller. When designing a device, the rule is to place an oscillator nearer a controller, so as to avoid any interference on lines on which microcontroller is receiving a clock.

2. RC Oscillator In applications where great time precision is not necessary, RC oscillator offers additional savings during purchase. Resonant frequency of RC oscillator depends on supply voltage rate, resistance R, capacity C and working temperature. It should be mentioned here that resonant frequency is also influenced by normal variations in process parameters, by tolerance of external R and C components, etc.

EEPROM memory makes it easier to apply microcontrollers to devices where permanent storage of various parameters is needed (codes for transmitters, motor speed, receiver frequencies, etc.). Low cost, low consumption, easy handling andflexibility make PIC16F84 applicable even in areas where microcontrollers had not previously been considered (example: timer functions, interface replacement in larger systems, coprocessor applications, etc.).

Above

diagram shows how RC oscillator is connected with PIC16F84. With value of resistor R being below 2.2k, oscillator can become unstable, or it can even stop the oscillation. With

very high value of R (ex.1M) oscillator becomes very sensitive to noise and humidity. It is recommended that value of resistor R should be between 3 and 100k. Even though oscillator will work without an external capacitor (C=0pF), capacitor above 20pF should still be used for noise and stability. No matter which oscillator is being used, in order to get a clock that microcontroller works upon, a clock of the oscillator must be divided by 4. Oscillator clock divided by 4 can also be obtained on OSC2/CLKOUT pin, and can be used for testing or synchronizing other logical circuits.

Reset
Reset is used for putting the microcontroller into a 'known' condition. That practically means that microcontroller can behave rather inaccurately under certain undesirable conditions. In order to continue its proper functioning it has to be reset, meaning all registers would be placed in a starting position. Reset is not only used when microcontroller doesn't behave the way we want it to, but can also be used when trying out a device as an interrupt in program execution, or to get a microcontroller ready when loading a program. In order to prevent from bringing a logical zero to MCLR pin accidentally (line above it means that reset is activated by a logical zero), MCLR has to be connected via resistor to the positive supply pole. Resistor should be between 5 and 10K. This kind of resistor whose function is to keep a certain line on a logical one as a preventive, is called a pull up.

Microcontroller PIC16F84 knows several sources of resets:

a) Reset during power on, POR (Power-On Reset) b) Reset during regular work by bringing logical zero to MCLR microcontroller's pin. c) Reset during SLEEP regime d) Reset at watchdog timer (WDT) overflow e) Reset during at WDT overflow during SLEEP work regime. The most important reset sources are a) and b). The first one occurs each time a power supply is brought to the microcontroller and serves to bring all registers to a starting position initial state. The second one is a product of purposeful bringing in of a logical zero to MCLR pin during normal operation of the microcontroller. This second one is often used inprogram development. During a reset, RAM memory locations are not being reset. They are unknown during a power up and are not changed atany reset. Unlike these, SFR registers are reset to a starting position initial state. One of the most important effects of areset is setting a program counter ( instruction.

PC) to zero (0000h) , which enables the program to start executing from the first written

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