Thanks all for your suggestions.

As far as just plain getting away from banking, I'm still hoping for it someday (this has been a pain and I'm sure its not over yet). For now, in light of the very specialized microcontroller we are using, where we are in the product lifecycle (hardware locked in), and our instantly enlarged codeset (we merged codesets/features with another company), I'm going to have to wait for a future opportunity to re-architect (drastically reduce code-size and/or change hardware).

As far as which compiler vendor to use, hopefully before long I'll get a chance to tryout more of the PC-based embedded development tools (my IAR license is a hand-me-down).

I asked IAR tech support to compile/link a short demo program for me & I analyzed the *.hex (directly & disassembly) & *.map files and it looks like their new toolchain will work for me so I popped for the upgrade price. They've offered 30 day return (no questions asked), so I think I'm pretty safe here.

Jeff