tony duell: :>have a feeling that eventually all obsolete computer equipment in :>britain will gravitate to chez duell... :I wish.... There are still machines I am looking for - PDP's other :than the 8 or the 11, a straight-8, more P800 series stuff, etc, :etc,etc. Oh, and somewhere to put them :-) well, the schematics for the pdp6 are available, so at a pinch you could always rebuild one. :> :> on the other hand, it makes the electronics more difficult, as :>suddenly you have to design a pll that will reliably lock to :>about 10 different data rates, rather than just one, not to :>mention making sure the :Not that hard. You design it as a synthesiser, of course. Probably :not that much worse (and similar in design) to the multi-speed :motor controller. probably. in fact, it might even be easier, because you don't have to worry about controlling anything physical. on the other hand, since you'd need a speed regulator in the disk drive anyway (and iwrc they tend to be plls) you might as well give that a range of frequencies to chew on and keep the data transfer stuff simple. there are arguments either way - about the only thing we would say, though, is that software is cheaper than hardware in scrap terms, and whereas commodore was already huge, woz was on a leguminous budget. :> controller can handle it. to make it practical to decode in :>software, the apple probably got it right - and let's face it, :>certainly in later :Being a hardware hacker, I've never liked the Apple approach to :doing everything in software, alas... ah, but we're a software hacker, so we just love it. :> besides, there's a certain beauty in finding that you can do something with the bare minimum of hardware. :There were certainly non-compatible 386 machines - didn't Sequent :make some? (multi-processor unix boxen..) No, I don't have one - :yet! yes, we believe so. there were other non-compatible 386 offerings too, were there not - eg. sun 386s...? but then it's a lot easier to make a non-compatible 386, given its somewhat multiplicitous architecture. just ignore real mode in the design of the hardware and you're away... protected mode on the 286, though, should have had more made of it. it was a missed opportunity. -- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her...