Based on my experience in getting started with various STM8 and MCS-51
boards, I wrote a few simple tutorials to help others. They use free
tools only. For various evaluation boards there are three simple demos:

1) LED counter controlled by timer
2) Serial output
3) Dhrystone / Whetstone benchmarks

The tutorials can be found at:

http://www.colecovision.eu/stm8/
http://www.colecovision.eu/mcs51/

Please tell me if you find any mistakes, or have any suggestions for
improvement.

Philipp

P.S.: Most of the STM8 tutorials have been around for a while, but
recently I made some minor updates, and added tutorials porting the
demos to lots of MCS-51 boards.