A while back, [Matt] bought a few 8051 MCUs and tucked them away for a future project. He just found these fabulous little chips in a component drawer and decided it was time to figure these guys out. Eventually, [Matt] stumbled across this awesome resource for 8051 programming.

The 8051 featured a still reasonably respectable 4k of ROM and 128 bytes of RAM – not too dissimilar from an ATtiny of today until you realize this 30-year-old chip has 32 IO pins. This microcontroller, along with its bigger brother the 8052, served as the de facto microcontroller standard for 20 years. You’ve no doubt taken a ride in a car that used one, and was even put to use doing low-level grunt work in early PCs.

[Matt] says he couldn’t find a Hackaday project featuring this 30-year-old microcontroller (not true, here’s one of those tilty mazes and an electronic toll booth), but even we have to admit we don’t feature much outside of the usual AVRs and PICs. Even though it’s 32 years old, the 8051 family still has some tricks up its sleeve like playing audio CDs. If you’ve got an 8051 project lying around, send it in on the tip line and we’ll probably throw it up.