Microcontroller Basics

• A microcontroller is a small, low-cost computer-on-a-chip which usually

includes:
– An 8 or 16 bit microprocessor (CPU).
– A small amount of RAM.
– Programmable ROM and/or flash memory.
– Parallel and/or serial I/O.
– Timers and signal generators.
– Analog to Digital (A/D) and/or Digital to Analog (D/A) conversion.
• Often used to run dedicated code that controls one or more tasks in the
operation of a device or a system.
• Also called embedded controllers, because the microcontroller and support
circuits are often built into, or embedded in, the devices they control.
• Devices that utilize microcontrollers include car engines, consumer electronics
(VCRs, microwaves, cameras, pagers, cell phones .. ), computer peripherals
(keyboards, printers, modems.. ), test/measurement equipment (signal
generators, multimeters, oscilloscopes …).
• Microcontrollers usually must have low-power requirements (~. 05 - 1 W as
opposed to ~10 - 50 W for general purpose desktop CPUs) since many devices
they control are battery-operated.
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 Microcontroller Components
From sensors

To actuators

Displays,
keyboard
etc.

RAM, EPROM,
EEPROM, flash
Single Chip
Examples:
Motorola’s 68HC11, 68HC12, AMD 29K,
Zilog’s Z8, Z80, Intel’s 8052, Microchip’s PIC
Low-power, embedded versions of desktop CPUs: e.g Intel’s 80486
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A Typical Microcontroller Application:
Car Cruise Control
Speed Measurement

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 The Motorola 68HC12 Microcontroller
A Typical 68HC12 has the following components on the chip:
– A 16-bit central processing unit (CPU12):
• 20-Bit ALU. Instruction Queue.
• Enhanced Indexed Addressing. Fuzzy Logic Instructions.

– 32-Kbyte Flash EEPROM with 2-Kbyte Erase-Protected Boot Block.

– 768-Byte EEPROM.
– 1-Kbyte RAM with Single-Cycle Access for Aligned or Misaligned
Read/Write.
– 8-Channel, 8-Bit Analog-to-Digital (A/D) Converter.
– 8-Channel Timer.
– 16-Bit Pulse Accumulator:
• External Event Counting, Gated Time Accumulation.
– Pulse-Width Modulator:
• 8-Bit, 4-Channel or 16-Bit, 2-Channel
• Separate Control for Each Pulse Width and Duty Cycle

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A Typical 68HC12
Chip Pin-Out

MC68HC912B32

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M68EVB912B32 Evaluation Board Layout

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Motorola 68HC12
16-bit Memory
Address Space
0x0800
User
Program
Memory:
256 bytes
0x08FF
0x0900

User
Data
Memory:
256 bytes
0x09FF

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68HC12 Programming Model:
Registers

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 68HC12 Registers
A 8-bit Accumulator A
B 8-bit Accumulator B
D 16-bit Double accumulator D (A : B)
X 16-bit Index register X
Y 16-bit Index register Y
SP 16-bit Stack pointer
PC 16-bit Program Counter
CCR Condition code register:
S STOP instruction control bit
X Non-maskable interrupt control bit
H Half-carry status bit
I Maskable interrupt control bit
N Negative status bit
Z Zero status bit
V Two’s complement overflow status bit
C Carry/Borrow status bit
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 68HC12 Data Types
The HC12 uses the following types of data:
– Bits.
– 5-bit signed integers.
– 8-bit signed and unsigned integers.
– 8-bit, 2-digit binary coded decimal (BCD) numbers.
– 9-bit signed integers.
– 16-bit signed and unsigned integers.
– 16-bit effective addresses.
– 32-bit signed and unsigned integers.
• 5-bit and 9-bit signed integers are used only as offsets for indexed
addressing modes.
• 16-bit effective addresses are formed during addressing mode
computations.
• 32-bit integer dividends are used by extended division instructions.
• Extended multiply and extended multiply-and-accumulate instructions
produce 32-bit products.
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 68HC12 Addressing Modes
• Inherent Addressing Mode (INH).
• Immediate Addressing Mode (IMM).
• Direct Addressing Mode (DIR).
• Extended Addressing Mode (EXT).
• Indexed Addressing Modes:
• 5-Bit Constant Offset Indexed Addressing (IDX).
• Auto Pre/Post Decrement/Increment Indexed Addressing (IDX)
• Accumulator Offset Indexed Addressing (IDX).
• 9-Bit Constant Offset Indexed Addressing (IDX1).
• 16-Bit Constant Offset Indexed Addressing (IDX2).
• Indirect Indexed Addressing:
• 16-Bit Constant Offset Indexed Addressing [IDX2].
• Accumulator D Indirect Indexed Addressing [D, IDX].

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 68HC12 Addressing Modes
• Inherent Addressing Mode (INH):
– Instructions that use this addressing mode either have no operands
or all operands are in internal CPU registers.
– Examples:
NOP ; this instruction has no operands
CLRA ; clear A
ABA ; add A to B result in A
ASRA ; arithmetic shift right A

• Immediate Addressing Mode (IMM):

– Examples:
LDAA #$55 ; load A with the 8-bit value $55
LDX #$1234 ; load index register X with 16-bit address $1234
LDY #$67 ; load index register Y with 16-bit address $0067
ADDA #$17 ; add the value $17 to register A, result in A

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 68HC12 Addressing Modes
• Direct Addressing Mode (DIR):
– Used to access operands in the memory address range $0000 through
$00FF
– Examples:
LDAA $55 ; load register A with 8-bit value in memory address $0055
LDX $20 ; load index register X with 16-bit value in $0020, $0021
STY $50 ; store value of Y to memory addresses $0050, $0051

• Extended Addressing Mode (EXT):

– Used to access operands in the full 16-bit address of the memory.
– Examples:
LDAA $F03B ; load register A with 8-bit value from address $F03B
LDX $0900 ; load index register X with 16-bit value in $0900, $0901

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 68HC12 Indexed Addressing Modes
• 5-Bit Constant Offset Indexed Addressing (IDX):
– Uses an 5-bit signed offset (range -16 to 15) which is added to the base
index register (X, Y, SP, or PC) to form the effective address:
– Examples:
LDAA 12,X ; load A with the byte at memory address (X) + 12
STAB –8,Y ; store the byte in B at address (Y) - 8
ADDA 5,X ; add A to the byte at (X) + 5, result in A

• 9-Bit Constant Offset Indexed Addressing (IDX1):

– Uses an 9-bit signed offset (range -256 to 255) which is added to the
base index register (X, Y, SP, or PC) to form the effective address:
– Examples:
LDAA $FF,X ; load A with the byte at memory address (X) + $FF
STAB –20,Y ; store the byte in B at address (Y) - 20

• 16-Bit Constant Offset Indexed Addressing (IDX2):

– Uses an 16-bit offset which is added to the base index register (X, Y, SP, or
PC) to form the effective address.
– This allows access to any address in the 64-Kbyte address space.
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 Auto Pre/Post Decrement/Increment
Indexed Addressing (IDX)
• Predecrement and preincrement versions of the addressing mode
adjust the value of the index register before accessing the memory
location affected by the instruction:
STAA 1,–SP ;equivalent to PSHA
STX 2,–SP ;equivalent to PSHX

• Post-decrement and postincrement versions of the addressing mode

use the initial value in the index register to access the memory location
affected by the instruction, then change the value of the index register.
LDX 2,SP+ ;equivalent to PULX
LDAA 1,SP+ ;equivalent to PULA

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 Indexed Addressing Modes
Accumulator Offset Indexed Addressing (IDX):
– In this indexed addressing mode, the effective address is
the sum of the values in the base index register (X, Y, SP,
or PC) and an unsigned offset in one of the accumulators
(8bit A, B or 16-bit D).
– Example:
LDAA B,X

• This instruction internally adds B to X to form the address

from which A will be loaded.

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 Indirect Indexed Addressing
• 16-Bit Constant Offset Indexed Addressing [IDX] :
– Adds a 16-bit instruction-supplied offset to the base index register
to form the address of a memory location that contains a pointer
to the memory location affected by the instruction.
– Example:
LDAA [10,X]
• In this example, X holds the base address of a table of pointers.
• Assume that X has an initial value of $1000, and that the value
$2000 is stored at addresses $100A and $100B.
• The instruction first adds the value 10 to the value in X to form
the address $100A.
• Next, an address pointer ($2000) is fetched from memory at
$100A.
• Then, the byte value stored in location $2000 is read and loaded
into the A accumulator.

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 Indirect Indexed Addressing
• Accumulator D Indirect Indexed Addressing [D,IDX]:
– Adds the value in the D accumulator to the value in the base index
register to form the address of a memory location that contains a
pointer to the memory location affected by the instruction.
– The square brackets distinguish this addressing mode from D
accumulator offset indexing.
– Example:
JMP [D,PC]
GO1 DC.W PLACE1
GO2 DC.W PLACE2
GO3 DC.W PLACE3
• Assume that the value in D is $0002.
• The JMP instruction adds the values in D and PC to form the
address of GO2.
• Next the CPU reads the address PLACE2 from memory at GO2
and jumps to PLACE2.
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68HC12 Load & Store Instructions

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68HC12 Transfer & Exchange Instructions

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68HC12 Move Instructions

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68HC12 Addition & Subtraction Instructions

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68HC12 BCD Instructions

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HC12 Increment & Decrement Instructions

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HC12 Compare & Test Instructions

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HC12 Logic Instructions

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HC12 Clear, Complement & Negate Instructions

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HC12 Multiplication & Division Instructions

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 Multiply and Accumulate Instruction
EMACS
• The EMACS instruction multiplies two 16-bit operands stored in
memory and accumulates the 32-bit result in a third memory location.
• Often used to implement simple digital filters.

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HC12 Bit Test & Manipulation Instructions

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HC12 Logical Shifts Instructions

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HC12 Arithmetic Shifts Instructions

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HC12 Rotate Instructions

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 HC12 Short Branch Instructions

The numeric range of short branch offset values

is $80 (–128) to $7F (127)

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 HC12 Short Branch Instructions

The numeric range of short branch offset values

is $80 (–128) to $7F (127)

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 HC12 Long Branch Instructions

The numeric range of long branch offset values

is $8000 (–32,768) to $7FFF (32,767)

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 HC12 Long Branch Instructions

The numeric range of long branch offset values

is $8000 (–32,768) to $7FFF (32,767)

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HC12 Decrement/Branch Instructions

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HC12 Jump & Subroutine Instructions

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HC12 Interrupt Instructions

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HC12 Stack Related Instructions

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HC12 Stack Related Instructions

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HC12 Condition Codes Instructions

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HC12 Example: Addition of Two Values
USER_STACKTOP equ $0a00

org $0800
Main lds #USER_STACKTOP ;load stacktop

ldaa #FIRST ;load first byte in A

adda #SECOND ;add second value to A result in A

staa ANSWER ;store result in answer

End bra End ;done with program

org $0900
FIRST dc.b #$01 ;first value to add
SECOND dc.b #$02 ;second value to add
ANSWER dc.b #$00 ;addition result

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 HC12 Loop Example
USER_STACKTOP equ $0a00
org $0800

Main: lds #USER_STACKTOP ;load stacktop

ldaa #ITER ;load number of iterations to perform

ldab #COUNT ;load number of iterations performed already
loop: deca ;decrement Acc A
incb ;increment Acc B
cmpa #$00 ;Is Acc A = 0?
bne loop ;No, continue with loop

stab COUNT ;Otherwise, save the count

End: bra End ;done with program

org $0900
ITER dc.b #$08 ;Number of loop iterations to perform
COUNT dc.b #$00 ;Number of loop iterations performed

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 HC12 Data Table Example
; This program takes a table of data, and creates a new table
; which is the original table divided by 2

prog: equ $0800 ;put program at address 0x0800

data: equ $0900 ;put data at address 0x0900
count: equ 10 ;number of entries in table
org prog ;set program counter to 0x0800
ldx #table1 ;Reg X points to entry to process in table 1
ldy #table2 ;Reg Y points to entry to write to table 2
ldab #count ;ACC B holds number of entries left to process
repeat: ldaa 1,x+ ;Get table1 entry into ACC A; inc X to next entry
asra ;Divide by 2
staa 1,y+ ;Save in table2; inc Y to next entry in table2
dbne b,repeat ;Decrement number left to process;
;If not done, process next table1 entry
swi ;Done -- Exit

org data
;initialize table1 (COUNT bytes long)
table1: dc.b $07,$ae,$4a,$f3,$6c,$30,$7f,$12,$67,$cf
table2: ds.b count ;reserve count bytes for table2.

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