<<I'm with Jon on this one. Getting HP's overall system reliablity requires a LOT of testing. For example: 1. Test at all combinations of temperature and line voltage extremes. 2. Test at all legal bus (HPIB or SCSI or...) loadings. 3. Test full legal bus load at line voltage extremes. 4. Test at minimum and maximum bus loads with differential temperature and voltage extremes. 5. Test with marginal timing at temperature extremes. 6. Test with marginal signal levels at temperature extremes. 7. Verify powerfail operation at line voltage and timing extremes. 8. Verify diagnostics; assure that there are neither unreported problems or false problem reports. And so on. There's a lot of tedious work that goes into certification; the fact that a peripheral/CPU combination works perfectly when both boxes are performing typical operations in the middle of their environmental specifications isn't sufficient to certify the peripheral as supported.>> Have I missed something? The fact that the CIO+HPIB+peripheral combination and the CIO+HPFL+peripheral combination are supported on the 9x7 boxes would indicate that all of this hardware/environment testing has been done from the NIO connector out. Likewise, the fact that the CIO+HPFL+peripheral combination is supported on the 9x9KS boxes would indicate that the entire system has been certified. I just don't see that there's that much left to test, and what little there is seems to be limited mostly to the low-level software interface between the 9x9KS box and the HPIB card on the CIO adapter. Steve Dirickson WestWin Consulting (360) 598-6111 [log in to unmask]