Jim, trad. cibas aren't gone yet...there's a large lab right down the road that makes ciba murals...and our mural lab down in Atlanta does the same, and can beat out quotes from lightjet labs . The finished product looks great as well...when you can still order a 4x8 cibatrans or print for less than half the cost of a digital one, it's still attractive.

As far as making them yourself, if you were looking at 8x10s or 11x14s, I'd say try it out, but a 24x30 is going to be a big project in and of itself. Unless you can find a used processor out there someplace now. That Omnipro model Ilford had (it was made by Kreonite for them), would run both b&w and Ciba in the same machine. It was a little longer on the b&w than the reg. models, like 90 sec dry to dry, but it had a "gate" that would bypass some of the ciba steps for b&w...you could alternate sheets of both materials...but, then it's a Kreonite roller transport proc. as well...it may still be in production, I'm not sure, but there are alot of independent repair places for Kreonite equipment, whereas with just Ilford processors, you usually have to deal direct with them (we do)...

I don't think Cibas are dead yet either, there's a similar color microfilm material Ilford makes as well. CA prints are rated better than any other RA4 material, but Cibas are supposed to be the best still for dark storage...of course this is sort of nit picky in a way, when it comes down to actually using the prints.