Allen P. Drummond wrote:
"I read the app note and came away with a slightly different view than you did."

First of all, thanks for taking the time to read it and reply.

"The app note is not warning against using PDATA."

Actually, it is:
In Table 3 on p14 it says, "This memory type is not recommended on the Triscend E5."
p15 (both in Table 5 and the body text) contains the deprecation of Compact memory model; this follows naturally, since this model relies upon PDATA.

"If you use the compact model you are telling the compiler to use only PDATA and you are limiting your variable space to a 256 byte page."

Not true: you are actually just telling the compiler to use PDAT by *default*; you can still use the BDATA, IDATA, XDATA, specifiers to use the other memory areas, if required.

As the Triscend App Note says, the Compact model is, "equivalent to explicitly declaring all variables with the pdata memory type specifier."

Thus is seems that their fundamental concern *is* with PDATA, which would naturally preclude the use of the Compact model.