"Calibrated loops" -- ugh.

At my job we have a bunch of machines down in labs that have custom
written code with "calibrated timing loops" written for the specific
processor...  and now, years after we have pretty much trashed all the
286/386 class machines, we've got guys in the labs looking for "spare"
12-Mhz 286 machines and 386SX/16's "because it would cost us $40k in
engineering time to rewrite the code".

Anybody want to list a 286/12 on ebay for $1000??  They might actually
buy it, since they don't want to spend the money.  It just amazes me...
of course, I've argued for years that they shouldn't tie the code to a
CPU speed, but then again... I'm just a 'lowly' sysadmin, not an
"engineer".