Good grief, I'm stunned by the responses. I thought i may get a few "that's a shame" and a couple of "thank gawd for that" replies, but not the flood that has happened. What can I say, other than thank you, very much appreciated. It's really good to know that people find my posts helpful.

Truth be told I'd be really sad to leave the forum permanently. Over the next few weeks I have a fair bit of paid for work to do and I have some family care commitments. So I plan to step back for a few weeks, and then I'll be back, like it or lump it.

It would be iniquitous to pick up on only one of the responses, but I'm going to do it anyway. A special thanks to MartinM for reminding me of the project we did together way back in 1975 at SETC (Student Engineers Training Centre) at RAE Farnborough. I've still got copies of my original reports and sure enough the report I produced with Martin was in my handwriting. It is correct that we failed to achieve a working 100MHz amplifier, although I think the logic for the counter itself worked. Of the three projects i did at SETC only the mechanical one worked; may be that should have told me something.

Once again, thank you for the supportive replies.

Andrew