Olivia channeling Bell is the series’ crowning achievement.

Guy wouldn’t know majesty if it bit him in the face.

Apple historically can’t or won’t bring mixed signal design in-house. It could be related to patents, standards compliance, or the much more complicated silicon design, DV, and test for analog vs digital. It’s not just the modem either. The bulk of Cirrus Logic’s business nowadays is making audio, haptics, and focus servo chips for Apple, and if Apple ever went vertical with those components Cirrus would collapse overnight. Yet Apple has been buying custom audio chips from them for over 30 years, so obviously this isn’t a new trend.

However the X1 motherboard is almost but not quite microATX, so if you can’t stand it in the rack mount format you can shove it in a case with a PC PSU. Also, you can safely cut the SCC card flush with the socket to keep it from getting lost.

If you can live without a video console, they’re a great first Sun.

Today $300 or less can buy a watch that runs UNIX, can emulate any machine in 1981 in realtime, and stream data from the ARPAInternet over a wireless connection orders of magnitude faster than any leased line.