The Japanese electronics giants of that era had an alterntive to MIX, in the ITRON [1] initiative, which included plans for a system-wide virtual machine to be used for compatibility purposes .. Knuths' books, while popular among Japanese computer scientists of the era, had some stiff competition in the Japanese industrial sector .. a few of the major players produced ITRON kernels with this capability, it would be interesting to research which of the personal computing toys of the era were ITRON machines in disguise ..