"Tony might be able to give more details and what's better about it than other modern ones?"
My experience is not really that extensive in terms of current relevance.
I have experience of:-
POINTS - easy to set up, pretty reliable and able to be diagnosed/repaired by the side of the road. I carry a rare "points in a can" with me when I go away. Not the best from a technological point of view, but points will get you home.
PIRHANA optical trigger ignition. Mercifully these have passed into history. The idea was sound - a plastic cut out disc pressed over the points can with a "C" section plastic casting containing a LED and a receptor feeding a signal to an electronic coil driver. The problems were many and varied, sometimes simply wiping the emitter/receptor clean would get you going, other times the under-spec transistors switching the coil would fail. I got pretty good at replacing those, but the manufacturer started to "pot" the control box in epoxy rendering them irreparable. When they worked, they worked pretty well - still used the mechanical ADV/RTD. Eventually the unreliability issues combined with BMW introducing their own electronic ignition killed the market. If you ever find one, do not even think of using it.
BOYER BRANSDEN. The first electronic ignition to incorporate electronic ADV/RTD. The only problems with these are that the advance starts feeding at cranking speed and is all-in very early. These things are tough and reliable, my 1978 RS has been using one since the early 80s and the wife's R65/80 has had one since 1987. The problems are the brutal way the advance feeds and the fact that the advance never stops - more revs equals more advance, right up to destruction. In my view these are still usable, they are also much cheaper than anything else available. For a long time there was no model to retrofit electronic beancans. There is now.
BMW electronic beancans. The one we all know and either swear by or swear at. Eventually they require a mechanical rebuild for which you get to make your own parts. Replacing the hall effect transistor is a bastard of a job.
EMERALD ISLE - sold under what ever name your importer chose to give them. The good is a superbly made beancan replacement that allows by the side of the road hall effect replacement. The can also has all the hardware to fit a second hall effect, either for redundancy or for twin plugging. the ICU incorporates electronic ADV/RTD which DOES NOT WORK AS CLAIMED. You can work around the issue, but later ICUs have a sad record of failure. Lastly the manufacturer has disappeared leaving importers to handle warranty from whatever stock they have according to their conscience. If you can pick up a EI beancan to use with an electronic advance ICU then do so, but avoid EI ICUs.
ABRIZ - another electronic ADV/RTD wannabe. They make a replacement hall effect carrier for the standard beancan which is pretty neat. BUT the ICU reliability is crap, utter crap. I fitted three of these before binning them, not one lasted more than 1000km. Identifiable by a roughly painted "advanced" on the ICU. They are pretty cheap and to be fair, for reasons I have never worked out, the bike that ate them also are a Bosch ICU. I have a question mark over ABRIZ ignitions.
WEDGETAIL. I have had an ICU for a while and I have sufficient faith in the manufacturer's ability that I have invested $1k in ICUs and beancans to convert out other bikes. When the cans arrive I will open one up and post photos.
