Could I interest you in a blog post?

If you’re on the fence, I _did_ get an 40-year-old microcontroller to blink an LED.

https://www.blog.montgomerie.net/posts/2026-03-02-rescuing-vintage-microcontrollers-part-3-life-at-long-last/

Rescuing vintage microcontrollers part 3: Life at long last

In this series of posts, I’m rescuing vintage microcontrollers from their decades-long purgatory in a drawer in my local makerspace. To this end, I’m attempting to use them to drive a LED sign made of WS2812 strips So far in this series, I found some decades-old Signetics SCN8031AH and OKI MSM83C154 microcontrollers in a drawer, and worked out that they’re 8051 and 8052 derivatives (members of the MCS-51 family) from the 1980s, and calculated that it should be possible to make them control modern WS2812 LED strips. In this installment, I get one of the microcontrollers set up on breadboards and get it to, at last, fulfill its purpose and BLINK AN LED!

Jamie Montgomerie’s World Wide Web Log