"ubw32 Grin (sparkfun, cost less than a mega and packs a punch)"
Thanks very much, Osgeld. I hadn't seen that one and, although most of my work to date has been with PICs, I hadn't considered the Microchip 32 bit machine. Interesting idea, particularly since the Sparkfun blurb says that it can be debugged using an ICD2. I just happen to have one of those handy. And I think that their development tools are compatible with the MPLAB IDE, which is a very good thing. Their sim and debugger speed up development, and improve the reliability of the final product. (Gotta double check that...)
I'm guessing that it's much less power hungry than the dsPIC line, too.
Many thanks for the lead!
TJ