I have a few educational motivations for this project.

First, I wanted to use 8051 assembly and get the feel of bare metal coding.

Second, I wanted to use a contemporary, open source assembler, thus the only feasible option I found was using SDAS, from the SDCC collection of open-source tools.

Additionally, I also wanted to try the cute STC15F104W microcontroller, which is a 8051 derivative.

"Well", thought I, "why wouldn't I do it all simultaneously?". Inspired by some other 8-pin microcontroller simon designes, most notably this excellent one, I went on to building my own version, as it seemed to me as a good project to achieve the educational targets I have marked to myself.

Soon enough I have noticed that there is very little information and examples (in english, at least) about the STC chip, and almost no information at all for using SDAS. These made it a little painful to dive into this project.

Thus another target was added to this list - documenting the whole work with the assembler and the STC chip, thinking that it would be nice to finally have some resources in the web for random folks like me who think about working with these tools.

This is going to be a fun and frustrating journey - let's get going :)