An Evaluation of the 8051 Microcontroller

With the increasing availability and use of 16-bit microprocessors, the 16-bit data bus and is becoming more prevalent. However, many peripheral devices such as printers and tape/disk drives still require an 8-bit data bus for their interface. This paper will explain how an Intel 8051 microcontroller may be used to interface a 16-bit data bus to a peripheral requiring an 8-bit data bus. A FIFO is used to buffer data from a 16-bit processor so that efficient use of processing time is maintained. The 8051 is used to control the peripheral and data transfer