beige rant (was Re: IBM 5150 with red case on ebay)

[Chuck Guzis]

On 05/13/2016 10:27 PM, Swift Griggs wrote:

> They would, and I agree that it'd be neat-looking to the right
> observer. It's interesting to compare the modern blinkenlights in
> datacenters to the flippers and diagnostic LEDs, component LEDs, and
> even SGI's front panel CPU graphs. My favorite era of "really cool
> display tech" was FL displays that were really popular in the late
> 70's and all of the 80's. Old spectrum analyzers and things like that
> could be very classy and slick looking (even today). 

It seems that a number of the retro folks are fascinated by the
7-segment displays on cheap Taiwanese cases of the 80s and early 90s
that can be made to display any number that you care to see, regardless
of actual CPU clock speed (mine were set to display "Lo" and "Hi".

Then there's the oscope tuning display on the Marantz 10B tuner.  So eye
candy has been with us for a long time.  Note that the "look" back then
was a brushed aluminum panel with matching knobs.  Everyone had it.

--Chuck