If this needs to move off this list, just tell me where to put it. Any better suggestions are welcome, but I think I have a game plan. I forget who was involved, but I have a question or two about the RAM meter thing, if we're going to try and build a circuit. I started thinking about it and realized that depending on what we're trying to do, it might not be that useful. First: are we measuring used RAM? Free RAM? Swap? what? Second: this is only going to be a crude indicator, probably, because we have to scale it onto the face of the meter. Do you want it to go 0--1/2--full like a gas tank? It's going to be possible, or maybe likely, that it just hangs out near the top of the gauge all the time, if Top is any indication (on my system.) Third: Whoever is doing things with drivers, the easiest thing might be to flip DTR on the serial port. Can you write something that does that in a clocked way? If you call 10 cycles one "word", then just keep it high for one clock cycle per 10% of the reading you are trying to indicate, i.e., 100% would be always high, on 5 off 5 would be 50%, etc. I think this wouldn't be too hard -- C or perl(?) can certainly do something every so many milliseconds. I'm pretty sure serial port I/O is not difficult to get at. Fourth: Did someone find meters that they want to use? I need to know the specifics of the meter. (volts / amps / shunt resistance.) Then, once we get that far, we can determine the clock freq and I can do the meter driver. Cheers, Phil -- "To misattribute a quote is unforgivable." --Anonymous