My samples of the S08JM16 and S08JM32 parts are on their way. Sadly I don't have a way, when they arrive, of doing anything with them. I lack the breakout boards to make them useful - they are in LQFP32 and LQFP44 packages - and I lack a way to talk to and program them. S08 parts use a Background Debug Mode (BDM) - a single-wire, half-duplex interface that is used both to program the Flash and also to debug live code.

One annoyance with Freescale is that there isn't a single super-cheap board to talk to BDM via USB. Each subfamily (such as JM) has its own DEMO board (costing $30 to 90), which has a USB to BDM connection, but usually somehow castrated to work only with that subfamily. The one "universal" BDM board is about $99. I may have to get one. It's the AVR Dragon of the S08 world - but more expensive!

I just realised that a fun way to play with this stuff might be the JMBADGE. These are quite cheap ($30 I think), and have loads of possibility. The JM family is one of the "Flexis" families, which consist of S08 (8 bit) parts on the low end (8k to 60k Flash), and ColdFire V1 parts on the high end (50MHz CPU, 64k to  256k Flash). I could misuse this to program other parts via BDM. And it looks like a fun gizmo.