The moral of the story was really to illustrate how foolish it is to expend human energy when that energy has been expended already and the benefit of that previous endevour can be had by spending a small amount of money. There are already plenty of free and commercial 8051 assemblers. I doubt the world needs another whether the year be 1665, 1985, or 2003 (assuming yours would be all done within the next six months; which I would highly doubt if you undertook to make a robust, tested, and publically usable product).

Michael Karas