mar feo wrote:
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The PICs have taken over the low-end

..I think this happened because the ISP versions of the 8052 weren't available when the PIC came out. The cost benefits of the PICs are not so great as they were, and architecturally they are not as good as the 8052, when the I/O and interrupt structures are well suited to controll applications. I have seen a return to the 8052 in quite a lot of amateur projects recently, with the ATMEL micros being particularly favoured.

Steve