Mike Raiford wrote:
> given the clean-room requirements and high-resolution photo-etching 
> process.

Except that it's pretty much mostly automated. It's a huge capital expense, 
and then automated after that. And when there's only a couple of fabs in the 
whole world, the amount of business they get pays off the fab pretty 
quickly. Basically the prices are set to make a decent profit by the time 
the fab's technology is outdated.

> Not heard of GPIB, so I looked it up. Apparently aka IEEE-488 surprised 

Wow. Even *I* heard of both of those years ago. :-)

> they're not using Ethernet or something less obsolete

Which ethernet? Thick? Thin Coax? cat-5?  Test equipment like this is 
expected to last decades.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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