George.....your reply hardly seems as being written with due respect.

1) Overlapping areas and varying length records in multiple HEX files are a fact of life. I fail to see why it is less error prone to merge via the text editor. The human eye is not perfect in matching up the data and seeing the overlaps. So I maintain the text editor idea is still "workable" but a bad solution.

2) In my comments regarding FLASH loading I was talking about the loader mechanism that runs on the target. Not the part of a downloader on a PC. 8051's still, in general only have 128 or 256 bytes of RAM. My comment still stands. If you look closely at my comment I specifically refer to the " in-target programming algorithm".

3) The checksum value I am referring to has no connection to the checksums of HEX records. It is the CRC or checksum that is often used to validate the whole program space in a target application.

So get off your soap box which does not appear to be any sort of fabrcation at all!!

Michael Karas