Peter,

I think we have the similar concern on choosing components. I am actually using the W78E58BP, which has 32 Kbyte on-chip flash and 256 byte of SRAM, 40MHz, it is an off-the-shelf components (check out www.arrow.com). The price for one is below $5. It is cheaper compare to most of the vendors. About reliability, based on what I understand (work in the field of flash memory), the typical life cycle is more than 1000, ESD > 2KV (human body model). On the other hand, no one ever program a 8051 that often, because most developers use emulator during development instead of constantly programming the chip.


Albert