HEI HEI

[bruce plecan]

ref several other comments:
This goes back some time, to a GM service school.  But, at
the time they said there were two basic types of electronic
ignitions, one being fixed dwell, and the other being variable
dwell.   The difference was that a fixed dwell system used
an external ballast resistor, Nippondenso, was an example
and that the other used a current limiting devise in the 
module.  Like GM does.
In the finer details of the GM discusion
  The dwell is just figured for coil saturation, and the ecm
delayed the signal to the ecm to "fire a cylinder late", and
then added enough time for the total advance, and then 
to advance the timing subtracted from this delay.
  The example at the time was two modules one from a
mechanical advance, and the other from a ecm controlled
distributor, and with the mechanical locked, they were
about the same in dwell behavior when spun in a dist
machine.. 
  But this class was for mechanics not EE, and may be 
oversimplified, but it's what GM put out.

  About the large in coil cap/remote coil dist.  once again
I thought we were talking about v-8s, and that is what I
meant for my reply.  For the v-6, 4 cycl. crowd I will readily
admit I don't have a clue on their finer points. 
  HTH  Bruce   Woke up late, drove too fast, red lights
           on patrol car behind me, I paniced having left my
           cone shaped hat at home in my haste, drove to
           the nearest construction site (20 miles), to use
           one of the state supplied orange cone shaped hats.
           Wound up having to stand on one foot counting
           to ten, saying the alphabet, touching finger to 
           nose JUST TO BORROW a dam state owned
           cone shaped hat, and got a ticket. 
           He wasn't a member of DIY EFI, (it's a joke)