Hi; I have been completely and fully admonished by "don't threaten to ask privately again ! :-)" so with due contrition I have a couple of questions this morning. Yesterday I started reading some stuff about digital electronics and microprocessors that I borrowed as a result of my integrated circuits question here. I would like to thank Mike Kenzie for lending me "Understanding Digital Electronics" and "Understanding Microprocessors" both by the Texas Instruments Learning Centre, 1978, he purchased from Radio Shack. I must admit I was sceptical when I saw the publishers, distributer and date. I was wrong. These are two excellent little introductory books, written for precocious 12 year olds or retarded 62 year olds. Thanks Mike. However, as a began to think about what I have read so far in these books and elsewhere some technical and conceptual questions have occurred to me: 1) a bit equals 1 or 0. More concretely, 1 is a pulse made up of 5+ volts while 0 is really a pulse made up of approximately 3 volts. Translated into eV (electron volts), 1 is then 31.2 quintillion electrons that travel at the speed of light. 0 would be an electric pulse of about 18.7 quintillion electrons (a quintillion = 10^18). I acknowledge we are really talking about the electromotive force of 31.2 electrons rather than actually that many electrons in one pulse, and we are talking about the speed of the wave front for the electromotive force rather than the actual transference of electrons from place to place. Actual electrons move much slower than the speed of light (70% -- I think). But it doesn't matter which mental picture I have, a representation or the full reality. To mentally envision electromotive force requires that I also picture disturbed Brownian motion, moving invisible fields and such in a direct current. For picturing what is happening in my computer, I just pretend that electrons are getting bunched up and moving at the speed of light. In any case, is the above a fair description of what a bit is? I remember reading that in reality a 1 bit in an ordinary chip (I have a P4 + DRAM) is equal to something like 5.8 ?? volts, give or take some?? percentage, while 0 is equal to something less than 3.4 ?? volts. Now I can't find the original reference. Can anybody tell me where I might find it? My problem here I am sure, is not knowing enough to write the correct search criteria. (I have been embarrassed in the past by not being able to find Linux things and someone else retrieving it in one google go.) As I think about what I have read so far, a few conceptual questions come to mind. By using varying doping levels and varying voltage levels in a single transistor couldn't a trinary or a quadrinary, or a decimal computer system be built. Putting aside why you might want to do that, is there any physical restriction on why it can't be done.? Lastly, as I look at various schematics of how a transistor works they all seem to show that when there is a 0 bit the current, of course, is too low of a voltage to complete the circuit. Those same schematics show the low voltage being drained off to ground. Why isn't the low voltage current used to form a separate low voltage path (circuit) so that a transistor would be 'either', 'or' rather than 'on', 'off'. Regards Bill