[GeorgeTirebiter]

Yes, AM186EM was doubleplus good. I used it in an early interface between a Kodak DC-20 camera (early digital) and IrDA at high-speed (1 Mb/s in those days).

Also liked the V20/V30 too, built a PC card comm controller with those. You are correct, it was normal to use MS-DOS compilers, although I did have to get a special-purpose debugger (code; interface was uart) for the '186.

With those kinds of products, it's 'annoying' that Intel sort of gave away the embedded space.

(agree: 8051 is high up there in the 'microcontroller' space.)