About the Founder

 

Since I was young, I was intrigued by remote control, robots, transmitters, in short, all electronics. I created countless electronic devices. I designed a lot of PCB's by hand, using ink. When the ATARI came along, with the ST1040 and an affordable PCB design tool, I bought my first real computer.

 

Dot matrix printers, at that time, did not produce very good print. Design of a PCB was still time consuming. I found that a nice BASIC interpreter, which was similar to GW-BASIC, was included in the OS(TOS). For some reason, I liked this language. It was easy to master and very intuitive.

 

I found out, that Atmel made the 89c2051, which was a 20 pin chip with flash memory. I was excited to find out that there was a small micro processor that could be erased/reprogrammed without the need to UV erase the EPROM. Before the Atmel chip, I used the 8052AH, with a BASIC interpreter. It worked nice, but code ran too slow. The EPROM's had to be erased by UV light which took a long time.

 

Those days, electronic circuits consisted of numerous CMOS and TTL chips. I saw the 89C2051, as an ideal replacement, for a lot of CMOS/TTL chips. It would make PCB design much simpler.

 

The idea to be able to change the behaviour of an electronic circuit, just by reprogramming it, without using a solder iron, intrigued me. Today, it is common practice, to update firmware, to fix bugs or add features. In 1993, it was not so common, at least not to my knowledge.

 

I initially wrote a complete tool for DOS. I rewrote the tool, when I was reasonably satisfied that Windows 3.1 was stable. The tool was for my own usage. When I discovered, that it would be usable to others, I decided to add Help files and to sell it for a small fee.

 

In 1995, MCS started to sell BASCOM-LT, a BASIC compiler for Windows 3.1. It was the first Windows application that offered a complete and affordable solution, editor, compiler, simulator and programmer. BASCOM-LT was a 8051 BASIC compiler. The reason it became popular, was that it included a lot of functionality that was easy to use from BASIC. To use an LCD display was simple, just a configuration line to define the used pins and voila, a working application in minutes. When you needed a different LCD display, you could simply change the CONFIG line.

 

When a different processor was needed, you only had to change the definition file!

 

Another reason for its success, was that we hid much of the complexity, from the user. No ASM to deal with, simple statements. Of course free updates and support.

 

Small companies that used the BASIC Stamp also recognized another advantage, that there was no need for expensive modules and the code ran much quicker.

 

When Windows 95 became more an industry standard, users also wanted a 32 bit version. A big part of BASCOM-LT was rewritten with the additional support for arrays and floating point (single).

 

With the many different 8051 variants, it was impossible to support all the chips. Having device definition “DAT” files, made it easy for the user to configure the 8051 variants.

 

When Atmel launched the AVR chip, the 8051 compiler was rewritten, once again, to support the powerful AVR chips. The result was BASCOM-AVR.

 

The AVR chip has a lot of internal memory. It uses simple linear memory addressing. The best part, is that you can make the chip program itself. No wonder this chip family became so popular.

 

Since the AVR chip is so powerful, we could extend the compiler as well. We could add features, which are almost impossible to add for the 8051.

 

With more and more users, there was no way I could manage everything in my spare time. So in order to guarantee the future of BASCOM, I decided to work full time for MCS.

 

Today, MCS is still a small company, with only 3 employees.

 

We believe in free updates and support. With the number of (demo) users, it is however not possible to support everybody. You need to realize that reading and answering emails is time consuming.

 

Not to mention to duplicate used hardware. We are unique, in that we even support hardware!

 

For a long time, we are working on a more professional version of the software.

 

We occasionally add new features to the current BASCOM version.

 

An ARM version is also under development as well.

 

Note, that we do not provide details or time frames, for these versions, nor do we, for other features.

 

In order to migrate to a new version, it is important that you keep your software up to date. This will make migration more simple.

 

Things we find important :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have fun !

 

Mark Alberts

 

MCS Electronics