As someone who has read all of 6016, doing so cost me a good chunk of my sanity.

Never mind the fact that many areas of the standard don't matter because the manufacturers of equipment that use those areas made up their own way of doing things that isn't 6016 compliant. So you can comply to the standard, or you can actually work with platforms in the real world, but you can't do both.

I've read and nearly memorized large portions of 6016 as well and I can commiserate with you. I feel a bit of pride mixed with shame at the fact that I know how to quickly jump around in the document and follow all the threads of logic. On the whole I think it's an interesting read, though. And I'm sure knowing it so well doesn't hurt my employability in the industry.

Technically I think platforms are supposed to document the areas where they're noncompliant with 6016 and submit it for approval. The name of the process escapes me at the moment. Not sure if anybody ever does it, though.

The biggest noncompliant areas I know of are...difficult to even talk about.

Ah, that's like RFC 4210 for PKI!

I got the pleasure of writing a good chunk of the DIS standard for how to emulate the whole shebang of datalinks, so add the tadil a/b/c (6011 series) to the 6016/5516 series....that’s 10 yrs of my life!