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"The board
itself was hard laminated green plastic an eighth of an
inch thick. Mounted on it were tens of brown chips and tan
chips, each looking like a rectangular ant with eight or
sixteen or however many little silver feet frozen to the
board. Connecting the ants were little sharply-angled rivers
of solder. Capacitors, resistors and heat dissipaters sat
on the board like miniature railroad cars, tiny robots,
and Christmas trees on the world's smallest train set. And
on front and back of the board there were scads of wires
held in place with dollops of hardened green glue. The back
of the device, in particular, looked like an electronic
bird's nest that had been sneezed upon. . .
"Even a software boy like Nick
could see the boneheadedness of this design. It must have
cost a fortune, and the number of wires would have made
it almost impossible to manufacture."
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