10 Sep
2009
10 Sep
'09
12:12 p.m.
M H Stein wrote:
In my days with Burroughs systems, the operator
consoles that had
"front panels" and many of their maintenance panels used illuminated
momentary push buttons that toggled on/off; that always struck me
as more intuitive (not to mention faster to set up) than separate lights
and switches.
The DEC KI10 (PDP-10 processor ca. 1973) did that also, as did the Fabritek
BI-TRAN SIX. It is NOT faster for data entry, because you effectively
have to manually
XOR each entry with the previous one. It might be OK if there were a
clear button (as
there is on the BI-TRAN SIX), or if the entry word cleared itself after
deposit, though the
latter would be bad when you actually want to enter consecutive
identical non-zero
words.
Toggles (with suitable handles) are much easier for binary entry,
because you can
push them up or down without regard to their previous state. With
practice you
can easily enter octal data three bits at a time using three fingers.