Hi, love the site

im currently learning electronics and would like to get into micro controllers, i was wondering if it would be possible to use an old motherboard BIOS chip as a poor mans PIC and what would be required to program and use this

any help is gratefully appreciated thankyou

 

The BIOS is the lowest form of interface with the CPU, aside from raw assemled code. It handles the personality of the specific CPU in it's board level environment. The BIOS is a grouping of routines that typically reside in ROM. It does nothing on it's own, rather it is read and executed by the CPU.

The answer to your question is No, you cannot use it on it's own.

 

hi, ok thankyou for your quick response
i thought that because a bios could be updated it would be a simple matter of reprogramming it. i know from past searches it is pretty impossible to find a datasheets for them.

 

The old IBM PC/XT BIOS are well documented. But the 'chip' is actually a ROM device, that can be read or written. It does nothing else.

 

What is your budget? A cheap PIC programmer from Microchip often cost less than the component cost of a simple RS232 based DIY programmer. That may not work at all

 

How about this for $4.30 - a programmer and 2 microcontrollers.
http://www.ti.com/ww/en/mcu/valueline/index.shtml

 

How about this for $4.30 - a programmer and 2 microcontrollers.
http://www.ti.com/ww/en/mcu/valueline/index.shtml

Awesome thankyou, will research this further and thankyou to everyone else

 

How about this for $4.30 - a programmer and 2 microcontrollers.
http://www.ti.com/ww/en/mcu/valueline/index.shtml

Cool stuff, I ordered several