Hi Erik,

there are many points of the economical view:

I think, good emulators are more in the region of 5000$ than only 500$.
Also view on the whole development process. E.g. if you need 14 days for training until you be familiar with the 5000$ tool and save 50 hours of 500 hours development time, the economical advantage seems doubtful.
Also, in my case software development was not my main task. So the expensive emulator would be dusty most times.

Often you need also different derivates. The C compiler fits for all 8051 devices. An emulator typically not.

So you can believe, that some people save money without an emulator and others with it. Its the amount of software developing, which influence the decision.


Peter