Serial memory devices offer significant advantages over parallel devices in applications where lower data transfer rates are acceptable. In addition to requiring less board space, serial devices allow microcontroller I/O pins to be conserved. This is especially valuable when adding external memory to low pin count microcontrollers such as the Atmel AT89C1051 and AT89C2051. This application note presents a suite of software routines which may be incorporated into a user’s application to allow an AT89CX051 microcontroller to read and write AT24CXX serial EEPROMs. The software supports all members of the AT24CXX family, and may easily be modified for compatibility with any of the Atmel 8058051-code compatible microcontrollers.