Fundamentals of Interfacing

Before a microcontroller can be put to work, the fundamental components that enable its functionality must be in place. These components are what we call the basic MCU interface. The first part of this chapter deals with the discussion of how to provide the fundamental requirements of power, clocking, reset, and bootstrapping needed to enable the functionality of any MCU. MSP430 devices have different levels of support for their basic interface. The supports level changes depend on the specific generation and family. In this chapter we discuss how these requirements are satisfied across all device generations.