To your experience, which 8051 in circuit emulator is giving faithful result, yet low cost (<$10K)? I am using Philips 8xC58 family microcontrollers. Thanks.
Why? Well, the reasons I was outlining above. JTAG emulators have a lot of good things going for them. And if the chip makers go that route, and thus aren't making emulator parts, the ICEs will disappear.
The JTAG is an added expense to the chip and we (some of us) are in very cost conscious fields where $0.50 per chip is real money. So far, I have only seen JTAG on the very expensive derivatives (Cygnal) and I doubt it will be seen soon on the $0.58 chips. Erik
An low-cost alternative for standard 40-pin DIP and 44-pin PLCC 8051 devices is the SoftICE from SST that connects directly to the µVision2 Debugger. See: http://www.keil.com/pr/sst_020315.htm