29 Feb
2008
29 Feb
'08
9:17 p.m.
From: cclist at sydex.com
I'm curious why anyone would want a front panel with lights and
switches. Except for some early IBM mainframe stuff, the number of
systems that I've worked with that had no front panel vastly
outnumber the ones that did.
Indeed, the front panel on the MITS 8800 seemed to be a waste of good
components and an anachronism at that. Better to take the costs of
the panel and roll them into a good diagnostic ROM with loader. The
S-100 followup machine that I used, an Integrand box, had only a
reset button on the front panel. I never missed the switches. After
the MITS box, I never owned another system with a blinkenlights-and-
switches front panel.
Just trying to understand.
Hi
My first computer had only a power switch and a reset.
it was a Poly88. It had a great 1K monitor. It had a 8x8 memory
display window, 8 byte dispaly for each register pair, ran the
memory mapped video, had single step( in RAM only ) and
ran the tape reader.
It was a tight pack into 1k but they used a lot of tricks to compact
the code.
I still bought an IMSAI just to play with the switches and lights.
It isn't as productive as the Poly but then it is just a hobby.
Dwight
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