27 Dec
1999
27 Dec
'99
1:48 p.m.
That would certainly work (and wouldn't damage the
computer), although I
don't know that you'd see anything useful on lights that were changing at
1MHz. Most machines with frontpanels had a way to single-step the CPU
from the panel.
Used to run an altair with a 4mhz z80 and the lights do tell a lot. You
can see it spinning in polled io loops and math routines where processor
cycles are eaten big time. Sure the low order lights are generally dim
glow but over time you get familiar with that glow and its subtle changes.
Allison