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tssge | 1 year ago

Yeah sorry I might've mixed up 8051 and 8086. Not totally sure, main point was that it's an old ass chip design used in modern products.

These chips with 70s design are very common in ordinary "non computing" products, granted most are Chinese clones with varying levels of modification. I spend a lot of time reverse engineering regular commodity devices, their electronics and their firmware. For example the portable AC I just opened had 2 of these 8051s(?) inside, with an ESP32 for networking which I find rather fascinating. The first one controls physical inputs (buttons) and IR input from a remote, the second controls the AC compressor, fans and lower level electrical inputs (sensors etc) while taking input from the first and the ESP32 handles wireless communication sending input to the first one.

These old low performance chips are found inside mice, keyboards, remote controllers, dehumidifiers, air fryers and almost any other "simple" electronics. It's fascinating how a 70s chip design is still so prevalent in our everyday products.

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