This site is dedicated to a flexible development board for the popular Atmel AVR AT90S2313 microcontroller.
A great starter board for anybody who wants to try programming their own microcontroller.

Various details regarding the board, accessories which can be used with it, other supporting parts and
some sample code are given on this site.

Most parts can be purchased from the shop.

Image 1 - the 2313 board

If you are wondering what equipment is needed to get started with experimenting on these boards, here is a quick overview.

1) You need a PC with a parallel port. The board comes with a programming cable which connects to the PC parallel port. The other end of the cable is fitted with a connector which plugs into a socket on the board. You develop your program on the PC and then download/run it on the board. Once your program is working, you can disconnect the PC.

Image 2 - the download cable

2) The board requires a power supply. A cheap 'wall-wart' type is fine, just so long as it gives between 8 and 12VDC or AC.

3) A multimeter. This is optional, but makes it easier to check out any wiring and circuits which you might hook up to the board. A cheap multimeter costs < £10.

4) Some software. If you are running Windows on your PC, there is a really easy way to write your programs using a variant of the BASIC programming language. This is made possible by the excellent BASCOM-AVR compiler. I've put together a step-by-step tutorial on setting up BASCOM to work with this board and developing/running your 1st program - click here for the tutorial.

Of course, there are many other ways to write code for this board, including AVR assembler and other compilers. However, the BASCOM route is the one which has worked for me.