We had this argument a year or more ago, and you KNOW I prefer monitors for their real-time capabilities over ICE's which, from where I sit, are big clunky pieces of hardware that get in the way more than anything else. I've got an ICE-51 for the MDS that was avaiable back when the 805x was a pup, and I used it a few times, and have held onto it since then in case someone like the Smithsonian Institution would value it some day. I've got an ICE for the HC-11. I've got an ICE for the 8085. I have given away others. I don't like 'em. I know what they are. They just get in the way, and even the latest of them can't do real-time analysis any better or more easily than a monitor. I'm sure you've noticed that JTAG isn't capable of reporting what's going on in dozens of registers in real-time, so you have to hook up your logic analyzer and go to work. I'd rather do that with a monitor than a $50K or $5 piece of hardware that contains someone else's compromises.

When I was discussing the very thing you mention, i.e. the need for large table space, with someone else, I recommended he consider one of the extended code-space parts because it's no secret that there's no advantage in swapping chunks of memory when it can all be present at once. It IS possible though, and can be called into play if needed. Moving data into RAM is handy if you modify it several times before writing it back into FLASH. Of course, it could also be NVRAM.

RE