ASM Software Monitor-52

amon52 – “a monitor for 8052/compatible mcu”

ASM Software Monitor-52 is a monitor/debugger for 8052 compatible mcus with the possibility to have code memory mapped into external RAM like my development board by Phytec does.

THIS IS A EDUCATIONAL PROJECT WITH THE PURPOSE ON LEARNING HOW IT HAS TO BE DONE. IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE USED COMMERCIALLY OR TO BE SOLD.

amon52 features:

  • almost no IRAM usage: uses register bank 2 for internal data and bank 3 for work
  • user program have register banks 0 (default) and 1 at their disposal
  • monitoring of registers for user program
  • IRAM read/write/dump
  • XRAM read/write/dump
  • SFR monitoring
  • code memory viewer
  • loading Intel HEX files into XRAM
  • jumping and calling user code
  • interrupt vector copy to XRAM (including forwarding into a user program)
  • welldefined and known jump table for access of monitor routines by user programs
  • SIO running on Timer 2
  • only valid input is echoed – you can’t type wrong chars!
  • Interface protocol is designed in a way that an external program on your PC can interface with amon52. This should allow to run a nice GUI debugger in the future.
  • more things to come in the future

The current state of the project is not completely functional, buggy, tailored to be run from inside the Tasking monitor and comes without documentation or warranty.

ALPHA SOFTWARE – DO NOT USE IN PRODUCTION SYSTEMS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!

This monitor source is specially configured to work with the PHYtec microMODUL-8051. It should work on any board with few changes necessary. (Mainly comment the Phytec memory init routine out.)

Screenshots

screen shot of v0.2 running on my board

Download
Version v0.2 (May 15th 2006) (13.5k)
Version v0.4 (May 17th 2006) (53k)

Release Notes
v0.2 – initital open release, contains bugs and not all functionalities
v0.4 – release with all major features implemented, probably NOT bugfree

Compiling

To compile amon52, you will need Asem-51, SDCC and GNU Make.