Andy, thanks for the advice. In an industrial environment, I would probably be buying all this stuff all done. Glue it in, wrap a little code around it and send the invoice. In reality, I'm a retired bloke trying to regain some of the skills that has calcified, learn new stuff (age is murder on the learning cycle), and just plain have fun with the things I have laying around or can pick up on the surplus market. I recently read a post that explained that knowing how to punch buttons on a calculator is great until you don't recognize a wrong answer. You need to know the underlying math to understand what's going on. I think in this case same is true. I don't need to build a counter from nand gates, but it helps to understand the nature of that counter. Sure, this slows me down, but then, where am I going?

GHI offers a wonderful solution for both understanding(schematics, documentation up the wazoo) and speed (complete board assembly) all I do is supply the interface connector, power, I'm good to go. I win on both counts.