> If those original chips hadn't been so popular, Microchip could've
> just oboleted them and started over with a new architecture every
> few years as they needed to make larger chips; that's what many
> other microcontroller vendors do

Thanks for the explanation Andrew. I've seen MC EPROMs from
that era but not micros

So in a way MC (or us, as we feel sometimes) were a participating
"victim" of their own success ? I'm sure that Atmel had the page
issue of PICs in mind when they designed the AVR as a competitor.
As they based theirs on a non-paging architecture anyway they didn't
really have to do a lot. Although paging does rear its head from time
to time, it's liveable, it's a fact. Perhaps one day MC will design a
"son of PIC"  that has contiguous access like other micros

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