slimdave, I did think of mixed case after posting - thought that was in the domain of "b*gg*r*ng flies" - OK, with mixed case you get to around 10**54

(BTW if you're into trivia - Archimedes' "Sand Reckoner" is the earliest known discussion of naming big numbers. He estimated the number of grains of sand that would fit in a sphere the size of his "universe" - something like the size of the solar system. The biggest number in his first "period" was 10**80000 and he didn't stop there!)

grjohnson, what is this "hardware" you speak of that so limits human imagination?