Welcome Michael to the last bastion of the SC/MP clan - the problem with other processor users like the Z80 and 6502 is they think the arguments they started in the playground were relevant. They missed the winner - the SC/MP which quietly got on with running the world around them and taking their money in most slot machines
Fascinating article and it makes use of Slothies parallel idea of an Arduino to blast software in directly via DMA - I did not see mention of supporting SMP which of course is a major feature of the processor but, I assume that is possible with some tweaks to add multiple CPU cards to an NDR rack.
I have to ask where did you get the ESS records that is a lovely find - I have a lot of Elektor and quite a bit of software is mentioned as supplied on them!