On 10/01/2015 01:19 PM, Don Y wrote:
A small crochet hook was indispensible for fishing wires out of the
"rats nest". I worked on large 2 ft x 6 ft panels (military work)
where you were dealing with *thousands* of components on a single
panel (power supplied by 3/4" square -- cross sectional -- copper
"buss bars" running the length of the panels).

Square D, the industrial controls manufacturer, entered the solid state
fray with NORPAK. They were modules a little smaller than a VHS
cartridge that you mounted on a backplane and interconnected with taper
pine jumpers. Each module had a number of discrete gates. As the name
suggests, most of them were NORs with a few NANDs and NOTs for good measure.

Theoretically you can do anything given enough NORs. You can also run up
a hell of a bar tab trying to restore your brain to normal operation
after doing so.