Hello all

I'm a student who has taken a project that's possibly overly ambitious.

The core of the project involves a microprocessor. I'm not entirely sure what microcontroller I need, but I've decided to go with the 8051/2, simply because there's lots of documentation around and it seems to fit the bill.

The first problem is I can't find it for sale, no one seems to stock the 8051/2. I'm guessing that they're known differently by retailers - is this right? Is there a popular model of either I can look up (I'm in the UK, but anything would help)?

Secondly, when I get one, how do I interface it with my PC to download a program to it? I previous assumed you got a programming board, burnt the program, then stuck it into the application. But given the enormous cost of both a PCB-PIC cradle and a programming board I was looking for alternatives. One thing I hear is that some models come with RS232 support. I take it this means I can solder my microcontroller onto the final PCB and build myself an RS232 interface directly onto my application?

Lastly, at what speed does each run? I have a real-time program which might be too heavy computationally but I'm not sure how to work it out. A very rough calculation suggests I need a per-instruction execution time of perhaps 100ns - is this feasible?

Thanks a lot!
Alexander