Jack writes:

> It was definitely an intentional decision to only use a single
>  16 bit word to store the date (5 bits for the month, 4 bits for the day,
and
>  7 bits for the year).

Just a small nit to pick, it had to be the other way around, 4 bits for the
month, 5 for the day.

If nothing else, Jack, it proves that somebody does read all of this material
that flies over the internet :-).

However, more seriously, I do agree with both Jack's and Jeanne's comments. I
remember in the early days very carefully calculating the number of bits
every decision that I made was likely to consume. But heck, I still do that
today too :-).

Wirt Atmar