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Indeed. I found the state machine very interesting to figure out. Although as somebody pointed out at the HPCC mini-conference, there's quite a bit of the control ssytem (chrcter counters, etc) that is not part of this state machine (althohgh obviousl the xtate machien controls and is controlled by these other sections). I thought that was a very sensible comment, and it pleased me to realise that at least somebody had understood what I was talking about :-) There are a few photos of the mini-cofernce on the hpcc web site I think (http://www.hpcc.org/), should anyone waht to see what I was doing with the 9866A HPCC is not a classic computer club (and this I suppose it's off-topic here), but we do talk about older HP calcualtors and desktop machines from time to time. If anyone is free in the London (UK) area on the second saturday of a month, you'd be very welcome to come along (all we ask is that if you start coming evry month, you join :-)). We're notionally a calculator club, but in reality we talk about calculators (old and new), mathematics, computers(old and new), electronics (from valves to FPGAs), photography (film, digital, old cameras), progrmaming (in just aobut any language for any machine), metalwork, general hackery, etc, etc, etc. Becxasue they're probably get their gold by refining it from old HP circuit boards, ICs, and the like :-(. -tony