12 Mar
1999
12 Mar
'99
8:17 p.m.
Oh, those switches and lights are mostly because the
hardware and software
used to screw up fairly often, and by looking at the lights, and flipping
switches the operation of the computer could be single stepped (one
instruction per button push) and errors identified so they could be
corrected.
Depends on the computer system also. On the Honeywell DPS-8 we had all
kinds of Blinken Lights and Flippen Switches, but they were for setting the
configuration of the system. Using them we could tell it how many
processors, what memory banks, and drives to talk to, etc.
Let's not forget the Rotary number switches, I've operated at least 3
different computers that had them. Although the computer controlling the
engineering plant of a Oliver Hazzard Perry Class Frigate wouldn't be
recognized by most as a computer.
Zane
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