I think Jay has already made some of his maths with his spreadsheet and tabular methods when we discussed speedometer and rev-counter systems.

I agree with Jay, though we use HLL (Pascal) for the bulk of our coding, when we need to do a complex maths problem, we will reduce it in a similar way to Jay's methods. Our microstepping controller is a classic example where an 8 bit micro shouldn't be capable of doing the job, or the vector graphic laser system that put 16,000 points per second, rotated, scaled and positined the image in real time- on a 12Meg clock and a single micro...

This is where the real engineering skill lies, an engineer can do a job for a $ that anyfool could do for a $100.

It is almost impossible to teach, since it comes from our devious imaginations, and god alone knows how we develop them.

The advanced design techniques and ideas skirt on the edges of what makes our products successful, and like trade secrets though the ages we keep them secret.

Steve