I noted that others were looking at and commenting on low cost solution for TCP and related services as network controllers.
One of the best solutions today is the Microchip dsPIC and PIC 24. The are not 8 bits but 16 bits and share lots of great pic features. This i what you get:
- low cost hardware
- support for just about all interconnect you can imagine (no firewir though)
- cots software
- low cost development
- off the shelf rtos products
- tiny footprints
- dsp libraries
- complete integration
some links that might be useful are: