Jan,
It was a close run thing, but in the end, the grief of changing development systems was greater than the drawbacks of the old system. My main (currently, only) project consists of around 20 .ASM source files, each around 50-64kB (the max file size allowed - one of the drawbacks of my current system), total assembling down to around 60kB of code.
Here is a resume of my report at the time of my trial (there were several other objections based on the hassle of changing assembler and linker, but they are irrelevant to this discussion):

1. No folding facility in the editor so presentation is poorer.
2. Couldn't find line numbers on the edit screen (I eventually found them; very small and at the bottom of the 'build' screen).
3. My scroll button worked in all screens BUT the edit screen?!?
4. You can build a project with multiple source files but can't do global search or search and replace! Worse; after doing a 'find' on one file, when you open the 'find box' for the next file, it doesn't carry over the 'find' text.
5. I think you MUST have a ':' after every code label (at least it says so, but I'm not totally convinced).
6. It's a multi-pass assembler and is sloooooow. It took longer to assemble one source file, than all 20 under my previous suite.

I appreciate that these are all criticisms of the PC software and, given time, could have been overcome or lived with - but you did ask! And I would just LOVE to have a SVGA screen presentation! Before anyone suggests it, I can't simply change the editor, as the debugger needs to link back to it. The real problem, as I mentioned before, was the differing instuction execution times.

One of the things that set me off looking at the Cygnal (apart from Michael's very useful encouragement) was its Windows compatability. My DOS suite runs fine under W95/98 (in DOS window) but, as the ICE uses direct LPT communication, XP won't have it. I have since tried running it under Virtual PC (in DOS, in a W98 virtual machine), and it works fine, but of course, slowly.

Re-reading this post, I have to admit that I seem to be whining! Apologies for that - as I say, it was lots of minor irritations that bothered me, all that could have been surmounted, except the major one of the timing...

Dave