Wow.. Been a while since I last posted here
Given I've moved to a different state and changed jobs, I haven't been able to do much on the hardware side. That said, I've had enough 'thought' time to run a bunch of scenarios in my head. Most of the discussion here, which I had to re-read in its entirety, made the valid point that the application pretty much determines which CPU is probably your best fit. Since my application could probably be boiled down to being a simple process controller, I feel the 68k8 is the best fit... for now
Still looking at the 65816 though.. I also bought the WDC tools but have yet to analyze the output. My best guess is that it has a virtual machine of sorts a la sweet16.
Yvo