Hmm. Just being reading the Dr. Dobbs. I certainly have hit the bottleneck talked about in this article... http://www.ddj.com/dept/architect/199902669 when using the 'thread.rb' Queue class. I hacked around it by creating a Queue of Arrays, but that probably creates more garbage than I should. This "Spin Buffer" trick looks Good... http://www.ddj.com/dept/architect/199902669?pgno=2 Anyone have a ruby Spin Buffer implementation lying around? John Carter Phone : (64)(3) 358 6639 Tait Electronics Fax : (64)(3) 359 4632 PO Box 1645 Christchurch Email : john.carter / tait.co.nz New Zealand