A low-cost prototyping board for use with Atmel's 8051 microcontrollers. The 8051-Ready board features a rectifier and voltage regulator and can be used with AC or DC mains adapters from 8 to 16V. Clock and reset circuitry are provided as is a handy prototyping area. The board also has four 10-way IDC headers providing access to the 8051's I/O ports and these may be used in conjunction with MikroElektronika's range of add-on boards. This makes the 8051-Ready board a useful step on from the Easy8051B development board as projects can be started using the Easy8051B and then migrated to a 8051-Ready board to easily create a prototype or finished circuit. The 8051-Ready board includes a connector for use with the 8051prog2 programmer for in-system programming, but alternatively 8051s can be programmed in an Easy8051B development board or any other programmer and then inserted into one of the 8051-Ready's microcontroller sockets. Three sockets are provided: one for 40-pin DIP devices, one for 20-pin DIP devices and one for 44-pin PLCC devices.