Not to rain on anyone's parade, but speaking as an owner of probably one of the first Sol-20's in the UK I would have to comment that the wood (which we always thought was a nice touch) was actually quite light in appearance and weight and if anyone had suggested wharf wood at that time I am fairly sure the suggestion would have been met with a degree of scepticism as would the suggestion of gun stock wood (I had achieved my marksman status by then and had some small experience of the feel of the stock in the hand and shoulder). For all that, I liked the SOL-20 as the best word processor on the planet at that time (with the Electric Pencil ROM) as it took great advantage of the VDM-1 memory-mapped display board to achieve what products like WordStar struggled for years to do. In fact, we often used to marry the VDM-1 to the Horizon for that very reason - that and the fact that we could then play ATC (Air Traffic Controller) on the North* which was a great mapped video game unavailable to serial terminals. It was also liked because it had a great keyboard with a good feel and, turn and turn about, could also have the North* drives bolted on to make a great little twin drive system. Another advantage was that we didn't have to solder up all the boards and assemble it like the IMSAI and some of the North* boards. I did love my IMSAI though, but the 8080 CPU was a drag as everyone was gung-ho for the 'new-ish' Z80 even though CP/M was still in 8080-land. Then came Cromemco and everything changed with CDOS and Cromix. People still wanted CP/M though - I recall even now assisting with porting CP/M to a Cromemco Z2 I took down to the Byte Shop in London one weekend. Of course, my IMSAI never flew better than when it was filled with Cromemco boards and a 299B drive on the side :) - those lovely blinkenlighten! Anyhoo - back to the SOL-20 - we always figured that the reason that the wooden side panels were featured was simply because the Horizon (the Big Dog at that time) was available with a very attractive wooden case cover for those who preferred something other than a functional blue metal case (in fact strangely remarkably similar to the blue of the SOL-20). Of course, although opinion may vary, either was arguably more attractive in an office than the metal mesh that SWTPC went with. I say this with some affection since as I write this my foot leans against the case of my old SWTPC AC-30 cassette interface. The innards gave up the ghost long ago but I can't bring myself to skip it as it brings back too many fond memories of a basement, an SWTPC processor, a lovely dual 8" drive unit and FLEX. In summary, if you don't mind an 8080 and you can get some decent drives for it (we were never very fond of the Helios drives) a SOL-20 is a very nice, well designed integrated system. I would have one again in a trice. James