I have experience points of sorts in both hardware and software. That and a certain degree of having seen what worked or did not has been instructional. All of that to explain my creds for why I am directing this in a path someone may profit from.
We can now order in SMD form components that were science fiction tech dreams- and thought to forever remain so. Sparkfun for example has some projects worth looking at to get into "what's under the hardware hood" so to speak. Once you get competent with SMD tech and board design it becomes possible to baby step for real some of the concepts in the "where does cpu/memory go?" As in - someone proposed early X80? or suchlike cpu on a memory device. Well- why not have some ubergeeken amongst us whack together some prototypes? Sadly my skills are a bit rusty compared to others on list- but then again, if I get bored this winter? The whole point is- We are good at arguments but have been a bit slack on incarnating much. I would love to see KCLUG as a group produce something of dramatic impact, but will settle for some hack that does something at all.
Oren