your institution might have some special purchasing arrangements...

Hahaha! That was exaclty a small conversation I had with Craig just a 2 or 3 days ago. Andy ,and all of you, that you live in the US or the more technologically advanced European countries, you take it as a fact that the institution(s) has signed special agreements with the distributors/manufacturers. Unfortunately, it's not like that... Ask me ,that I live in Greece, or all the other guys, that live in India, Pakistan, etc. , how things are in reallity. In small markets you have to face such difficulties/limitations... Thank God, there is Internet and in many cases you can order some samples directly from the manufacturers' sites or purchase online small quantities from distributors such as Arrow, Farnell, Digikey or RS.

Back to the subject: Be Be, for external flash memory I would recommend PSD memories from ST. Easy to program and they have the advantage of a small RAM section and not only. For more info go to:

1) http://www.8052.com/tutflash.phtml

2) http://www.st.com