Front panel switches - what did they do?

[Jon Elson]

On 05/24/2016 11:34 AM, William Donzelli wrote:
>> The improved reliablity of LSI logic over discrete and SSI, and the creation of ROM chips of reasonable capacity (to hold the bootstrap or a monitor), would bring about the demise of the blinkenlight  front panel.
>> Note that only a couple of the first microcomputers had blinkenlight front panels, and they were pretty much gone from minis and mainframes by the late-70s.
>
The early PDP-11s had a diode matrix ROM for the boot 
memory.  You could change the boot code with a wire cutter 
and soldering iron.

Jon