HOW TO READ DATASHEET

1. Select Microcontroller/Microprocessor
2. Choose manufacturer
3. e.g.
89C51 -12pc
89company code
CCMOS (TTL/CMOS Technology)
51series
12internal oscillator
ppackage(e.g DIP)
cstandard(e.g.-->1. Commercial 2. Industrial 3. Military)

4. Understand pin diagram and package

5. According to that download user manual and datasheet of that particular controller
6. Understand difference between user manual and datasheet(e.g. Electrical characterictics
are mentioned in datasheet and all registers, peripherals are described in detailed in
user manual)
7. Know the Difference between 8bit,16bit,32bit microcontroller
8. Understand Block Diagram
9. Understand Memory mapping
10. See the pin description e.g. functionalities on pins, which are analog pins , which are
digital pins, which communication protocol supports and how many protocols are
supported(e.g some controllers have two UART, two I2C).
11. See which pins we can use as input and as output.
12. See How many ports are present.
13. By default Which port pins are high or low(after reset ports are high/low?)
14. Current sinking and current sourcing capacity of port
15. Oscillator frequency (when to use internal oscillator frequency and when to use external
oscillator frequency)
16. Which port has internal pull up configuration which port need to configure external pull
up
17. Why we need pull ups
18. For output configuration drivers are available or not.
19. How to make port input / output or analog/Digital.
20. How to make pin input / output or analog/Digital.
21. See A to D configuration bits.
22. How to enable/disable interrupt
23. Check interrupt flag is cleared by hardware or not
24. How many timers are present and modes of timer
25. When to use 8bit timer and when to use 16bit timer
26. Which internal peripherals are present
27. How many registers are bit addressable or byte addressable
28. Check register is read only or readable and writable
29. How set or clear bits of registers of particular peripheral.
30. How to write ISR for each interrupt(syntax of ISR are written in user manual of that
particular compiler e.g to write ISR of pic interrupt see user manual of xc8 compiler)
31. check how many priority levels are present.
32. Size of data type(depends on compiler)
33. What is prescaler and why we need prescaler. prescaler calculations
34. Check whether external interrupts are digital or analog only
35. See how data get send (MSB first or LSB first) for particular protocol.
36. How to do calculations to generate hardware interrupt
37. Check how baud rate is generated for any controller (also check is it possible to change
it in run time or not)
38. When synchronous and asynchronous communication is used
39. Understand IDE, compiler
40. How Reset works
41. How delay library function is declared/called.
42. Compiler only knows software events . it does not know hardware generated events so
that we use volatile.
43. Know basic concept about Bootloader
44. Difference between hardware stack and software stack
45. In which memory stack is present
46. Watchdog timer

Snehal Jadhav