You have to wonder if it was worth what they saved vs just using an 8051 There are all sorts of direct and indirect costs in something like this. Did they per

You have to wonder if it was worth what they saved vs just using an 8051 There are all sorts of direct and indirect costs in something like this. Did they perhaps reuse an older design? I've run into all sorts of weird/obsolescent bits in manufacturing environments (like industrial controllers) where the answer was "yeah...newer tech would be nice, but we already had this design on the shelf and it fit the minimum need and the NRE costs were covered and it's been debugged within an inch of it's life and the regulatory hurdles have been cleared and the manufacturing/supply chain kinks have long since been worked out and our customer support people are up to speed, soooo...". Cool RE job @injb, BTW.