Your'e drawing the wrong conclusion, (has it been only 5 years?) but it IS the case that I've never used a '320, nor have I used a part made after 1985 until Dallas released their "ultra-fast" series. It was only then that 805x became really interesting since it had previously been performance limited, and it was easier for me to use other MCU's. Up to that point in time, the performance was too low to compete with the MCU's with which I'd become comfortable. In the '80's, the 805x was not cost-competitive with components that outperformed it. In the '90's this continued for some time. By then there were plenty of 4-6 MIPS MCU's while 805x's were still at the 2-3 MIPS level.

I've programmed and maintained systems that contained as many as 60 805x's as slave processors, and, in recent years, have tried the DALLAS parts in their sockets. Most of these were COTS boards in Multibus backplanes that have been in use since the '80's. They used external memory most of the time, so I haven't had to struggle with the FLASH-corruption or reset issues that seem to come up frequently. Unfortunately, I've not been comfortable enough with the DALLAS parts, yet, to incorporate them into clients' products, because every time I intend to do so, I learn that this or that doesn't work as initially specified. Maxim/Dallas is good about admitting their faults, but not very timely. I've also found lots of discrepancies in their doc's, so I'm still working on and worried about that.

I've occasionally built a small device with an old (take a deep breath, Erik) component that I had on hand, for one-off's, usually a freebie.

Most of the MCU's I've put out have been HC11's or HC05's. I've fiddled briefly with the early "SCENIX" parts, which were 100 MHz PIC's, but couldn't stand the architecture.

The Dallas parts I've tried have worked fine as high-speed 8032's. I've tried a number of things with these parts but not all were successful. One MAJOR disappointment was their initial claim of 50 MIPS performance, which their FLASH process couldn't support.

I'm not in love with the 805x architecture or the fact that fewer and fewer manufacturers are producing the old 805x-pinout and packaged parts. This is because I maintain old systems that rely on the original pinouts.

I continue to have an interest in this series because it is inexpensive and quite effective when it fits an application. Most often, I prefer to buy boards and apply them to specific portions of tasks, often involving a dozen or more boards. However, I'm not excited about parts that don't drop into the socket for 1979 parts.

RE