Don't know if this simp[le tip is of any use to anyone, but... Some time ago a thread was posted asking how to apply a bit-map image to a tiling node. At the time I couldn't think of how to do it (although I made a couple of rather bizarre suggestions).

The problem arises (as you can see in the above pic) from the fact that the image gets applied to the whole of the texture, not to each individual tile.

Of course the answer hit me several weeks later in a totally different context, and it's easy...
(see next post - I only know how to attach a single pic per post..)