> >                in      sreg_save,SREG
> >                in      tmp,REGISTER
> >                andi    tmp,0xXX
> >                out     REGISTER,tmp
> >                out     SREG,sreg_save
> >                sei

Hm, another thing to add maybe is that on the AVR you can bit manipulate
LOW registers.  One is EEDR, which is free when you don't use the EEPROM
currently. I could have written, too:

                in      tmp,REGISTER
                out     EEDR,tmp
                cbi     EEDR,intbit
                in      tmp,EEDR
                out     tmp,REGISTER
                sei

It'll take one more cycle, but 1 general purpose register less (sreg_save).



But in the actual implementation I did define several literals (all
possible combinations) and did directly load them.  It consumed more code
space total, but less execution time as well as no status bits.

While the PIC offers more options for sneaky code, the AVR isn't boring too.