[Resend with corrected Subject:] Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> (in reply to a message from Fred Cisin) wrote: Hah! Then I probably need some too ;-) Are those already on sale in the drugstore in Treacle Mine Road or do you still have to get them from the pharmaceutical institute of the Unseen University? (Another appreciator of TP humor outs himself...) This is somewhat akin to the ideas I've been pushing around for some years now. I'm thinking that porting a familiar OS to some 'obscure' (to the average DOS/Wintel user) vintage architecture could serve to keep lots of these machines in active service with the general public. (But then there wouldn't be so many around for us to hoard - so that's perhaps why it isn't done...) Of course there would be a need for software portability as well, so you might want to include some sort of cross assembler or how-you'd-call-it in the package that, llke, takes a win32-x86 executable and turns out a win32-sparc (or whatever) executable. No idea if that's even remotely possible without excessive manual intervention... So don't contend yourself with just the CLI - you don't have to. There is an ongoing effort to create a FOSS Windows 2k/XP workalike named ReactOS. Currently that is targeted at x86 only but I'm holding high hopes that its code base will inspire such portery. "Windows" for all those systems that pack the horsepower to run it, including but not limited to those that once were NT's target platforms - Alpha, RS/6k (Siemens RM400), PPC (PowerStack) and Clipper (Intergraph) springing to mind immediately. Well put. Any of these on ist own would make enough of a reason methinks ;-) Add the conservation and ongoing practical utility of vintage hardware to that and let's see where it goes. Arno Kletzander ...sent from my HTC Magician PDA -- NEU: FreePhone - 0ct/min Handyspartarif mit Geld-zur?ck-Garantie! Jetzt informieren: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/freephone