Now *this* is cool

Right, Jeff. And this was a conversation I meant to finish with Tony Duell. I made a remark about the speed I was seeing in a particular simulator of old iron as run on a 233MHz Pentium-1 PC. Tony remarked that he didn't have a machine of the host class (the Pentium-1 PC), so the simulator was therefore not available to him, but that it didn't matter much to him because he prefers the *real* original iron anyway. And that's fine... I too, would love to own a Cyber 172, but even if I ever find one (doubtfull), I wouldn't be able to afford to turn it on even one time. So I wouldn't be able to enjoy it as a *computer*, but rather as an *object* (d'art or whatever). I suppose for someone who didn't have a history with a particular machine, that is, an old beast like a CDC 6600 or similar, that being able to recreate the *software* environment by having a simulator just doesn't mean much. But for mean, it means everything. The operating system and the language translators and utilities were my points of familiarity as a programmer; again, had I been an engineer on one of these systems, having something I could bootstrap might be less important. Now, the FPGA route is even better than a simulator, of course, because it's faster. Also, getting real old peripherals to work with a re- implemented CPU is also promising- in many cases, the FPGA board could be set in open space in old iron and the system be made to appear operational even if not! Oops, time for more coffee... -dq