I know the pain. I found that the largest distributor in the world called Arrow found fancy method to get rid of small buyers by making parts very expensive.
You could order SOME parts for your prototype, but they chrge you extra fee per any type of part. It is about $10 or so (if I remember) plus shipping and handling. Thi is extra cost over price of single electronic element IF they sell select one as single part package. Now go figure how much one microcontroller would cost ($20-30 ???)... if you ordered only one.

However Pioneer Standard (www.pios.com) let you buy many parts (not all) in single pieces. You will have to pay for shipping and handling, but you can't avoid that with any distributor. Well, prototype or single unit production is has always been the most expensive one.

It is worth however either to by several parts with one distributor to lower the cost. I buy single, simple parts in RadioShack if they have it. Then when it comes to majority of parts we use in serious hobby or prototyping (not some fancy electronic kits thta people think they became electronic hobbyst after assemblying such a kit) you can go to Pioneer Standard (www.pios.com), DigiKey (www.digikey.com), All American (http://www.allamerican.com), Iguana Labs (http://www.iguanalabs.com), Amazon Electronics, Inc. (http://www.electronics123.com/).
or any other places I do not recall right now.

As far as philips MCS-51 microcontrollers it is difficult to get them in the USA. You would probabaly have to go to European sales as Philips dominates on that market. In the USA I guess Atmel microcontrollers are easiest to get... and they really become standard (flash memory is so easy to program and erase plus it is relatively inexpensive that this is probably most popular type of microcontroller between hobbysts - no need for expensive EPROM versions and EPROM erasure devices, extra time to clear/erase device with UV etc.). I believe that Philips (and not only them) followed Atmel in flash versions of microcontrollers... but it is really though to get those in North America.


I hope you will succeed with getting what you need... but if there is no specific feature of the microcontroller from Philips you may want to try something different from Atmel or someone more popular in the USA (maybe Dallas). That's not to say that I do job for Atmel, but they simply made a great job by dominating market here.