I have been thinking about the problems with reinventing the wheel. What are the technical challenges to building additional EMPEGish units? Although the existing units use customized motherboards, could off the shelf minature boards suffice? The VFDs appear to be readily available. Could this be put together in kit form? The kernel might be tough but people are already hacking the existing kernel such that there should be a pretty good idea of what's needed. Like I said, a crazy idea.