Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!portal!cup.portal.com!mmm From: mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Beating pinout by voltage domain multiplexing Message-ID: <31958@cup.portal.com> Date: 21 Jul 90 17:27:38 GMT References: <31921@cup.portal.com> Organization: The Portal System (TM) Lines: 18 Yet another way to send two signals down one wire would be to have two power supply rails. One would be an ordinary 5V power supply; the other would be a source of muons (i.e. mu mesons). A muon is a negatively charged particle which can take the place of an electron in an atom. It's much heavier, though. The power supply would be somewhat expensive, because it would need to include a small cyclotron. Note that while our notational convention suggests current flows from positive to negative, the actual movement of electrons is from negative to positive. Therefore our two power rails would have to be below ground. Also note that in most logic families, the driver is a current sink at one logic level and a current source at the other logic level. We'd have to invent a new logic where the driver is a source at both levels, otherwise we would only have 3 logic states: 0 -5 (heavy) -5 (light)