New YS-63 STM32 "black pill" pin-compatible with 8051

[I wanted a rude username]

A friend in China offered to buy some stuff from Taobao. While searching for blue pills, I found this. It doesn't exist on AliExpress or eBay, but can be found on Taobao, Alibaba, and some other Chinese ecommerce sites.

The pinout is completely different from any other "pill" board. It touts pin-compatibility with the 8051, and indeed does have power and other pins in the same locations (and I/O pins mostly in a similar order).

The selling point is, it can be plugged into devboards designed for the 8051, thus getting more life out of them. I guess the 8051 and associated equipment is more popular in China.

Here are some photos taken from the listings, plus the 8051 pinout from Wikimedia for comparison:






Some listings call it the YS-63. Other than this, there seems to be zero information about it anywhere.

I would document this on the stm32duino wiki, but account creation is disabled on that site.

[amyk]

Yes, the 8051 remains a very common MCU family in China. No ARM core licensing costs means they can be had for much cheaper.

[PCB.Wiz]

The selling point is, it can be plugged into devboards designed for the 8051, thus getting more life out of them.

Cute enough, but I wonder why they chose a 3v3 MCU, when there are plenty of 5V operating ARMs out there, not just 5V tolerant ?

.... I guess the 8051 and associated equipment is more popular in China.

Yes, and growing strongly too, with many new releases.
See STC, WCH, Nuvoton, Syncmos, ABOV, for examples of expanding 8051 families, at low prices.

[tsman]

Cute enough, but I wonder why they chose a 3v3 MCU, when there are plenty of 5V operating ARMs out there, not just 5V tolerant ?

I expect it is just because of familiarity with STM32. They're very popular in China and incredibly cheap so plenty of developer experience. This module would be a cheap & easy upgrade path for old 8051 based designs.

[PCB.Wiz]

Cute enough, but I wonder why they chose a 3v3 MCU, when there are plenty of 5V operating ARMs out there, not just 5V tolerant ?

I expect it is just because of familiarity with STM32. They're very popular in China and incredibly cheap so plenty of developer experience. This module would be a cheap & easy upgrade path for old 8051 based designs.

Well, for some values of 'old design'....
With no ALE or PSEN pins, No Xtal pins, and a XTAL choice that is not 8051 related, plus the ability to only drive pins to 3v3, it is far from a broad 8051 replacement.
As illustrated, it may be suitable for some 'already in the lab' 8051 large expansion boards.

[Doctorandus_P]

Gosh, now look at that:
http://www.stm32duino.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4546

[I wanted a rude username]

Gosh, now look at that:
http://www.stm32duino.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4546

I'll let just let Wikipe-tan handle this.   



But it will be interesting to see what stm32duino members say.

[tsman]

I'll let just let Wikipe-tan handle this.   

This so much. It isn't documented if you need to go trawling through a huge thread on a forum.

RogerClark is on the eevblog forum as well so maybe he can sort out your wiki access?