About the Founder

 

Since I was young, I was intrigued by remote control, robots, transmitters, in short, all kinds of electronics. I created countless electronic devices. I designed a lot of PCB's by hand using ink and later using tape.

At the ETS(electronic technical school in Amsterdam) we had a Philips main frame with terminals which could be programmed in a simple form of BASIC.

When working at Philips in Hilversum i also worked with an industrial computer that could be programmed in BASIC.

The Apple II we got later on at the ETS could also be programmed in BASIC.

 

When the ATARI came with the 1040ST and an affordable PCB design tool, I bought my first real computer. I bought the ATARI just for the purpose of PCB design. The netlists had to be manually entered.

 

Only Dot matrix printers where available at that time. And the prints were not really usable. That only changed when laser printers became available.

I found out 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 made some programs for the PTT(now KPN) that were revolutionary at that time.

 

For hobby purpose i used the 8052AH BASIC programmable processor from Intel. I made a lot of interfaces using PIO, relay, etc. My home was automated in 1986. Because of my work for the PTT i was also able to get caller info, something not available as a service yet. I used the 8052AH to show the caller info on an LCD.

The 8052 was great but the UV eeproms had to be erased using UV light. It was slow.

 

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.

 

In 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. So the 2051 became a replacement chip. Like a small black box chip. Now one was able to design his own chips!

 

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 a 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 a simulator and to sell it for a small fee to support my hobby. Today you can get electronic devices for little money. But a resistor used to cost 5 cents !

 

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. Using 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 name of the definition file. No need for a lot of .h files.

 

Another reason for its success, was that we hide much of the complexity for 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 : There was no need for expensive modules and the code ran much quicker.

 

When Windows 95 became 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 to 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 and a few contract workers.

 

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!

 

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 :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Alberts

Managing Dire

MCS Electronics