>It's hard today to even conceive of a 4K machine, where we 
>can't get anyone to consider keeping even a text file or HTML file down to 
>4K. 

Actually, many MILLIONS (Microchip claims half a BILLION in 10 years) of
tiny memory machines are embedded into things all the time, like tiny PIC
processors, which cost a buck or two. They do things like control your
toaster, or scan the keyboard on your telephone, or make your lamp dimmer
work, or convert movement of your mouse's rollers into serial data, or can
even run interpeters for high level languages (like in a Parallax Basic
Stamp IISX, which I believe executes 10K "bytecodes" per second). All the
skills needed for such low memory devices is still alive in the embedded
world. A difference is a little PIC processor may crunch along at many
millions of instruction/sec, which is probably a bit faster that a 1401
was. And consume little enough power to run off a watch battery (assuming
it's mostly idle). See http://www.microchip.com for details.

- Jan