I think I'm starting to fall in love with RedPower, in Technic Minecraft. Unlike the BuildCraft pipes, if RedPower pipes can't send anything into a connected inventory, even if a pulse is sent to a filter to pull things out of a chest, it won't do it. If any excess
does happen to pop up, its just sent back down the system, and right back into the chest from whence it came.
No need for obsidian pipes, BuildCraft engines, or any complex retrieval systems, since the filters work off simple redstone pulses, which you can do easily with a timer and some red alloy wire. No muss, no fuss...lovely, and efficient. Just how I like my machines.
[ETA]
My god, I think I've created not one, but two monsters. My first monster? A behemothic BuildCraft energy generator that works off 64 redstone and 64 steam engines, the latter of which are fueled by an endless supply of charcoal (4x less EMC than regular coal) distributed by a RedPower pneumatic tube system.
My second monster? You know how, with my behemoth BuildCraft generator, I effectively have a massive, endless supply of BuildCraft energy? I've done the same with IndustrialCraft, using a little trick I learned by reading the Technic wiki comments that allows me to create endless amounts of lava. FOR FREE. (Minus parts and labor, of course)
Oh, and how much can this generate? Well, it may not look like much, but my tanks were about...15% full before I made two of these wee buggers. A few Minecraft days later, I now have THIS.
Yeah. I...actually forget exactly
how high those towers of tanks are, but there's a dozen per row. My guess? They're about 12 blocks high, so that's...12x4x12 = 576 tanks. With each storing 16 cubic meters of lava, that brings me to a maximum of 9,276 cubic meters of lava, which I'm nearly at.
Sooo...yeah. Effective, efficient, and endless. I dunno bout you guys, but I'm pretty damn proud of myself, right now.