Front panel switches - what did they do?

[Charles Anthony]

On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 9:44 AM, Swift Griggs <swiftgriggs at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> It probably still impressed the suits when they walked the data center.
> I've done data center tours with row after row of HP or Dell x86 servers
> and it's not much to look at.
>
>
Definitely.

Several OSes would show distinctive 'idle' patterns on the lights, this
provided a quick visual cue about system load for the big multi-user
systems.

As I understand it, the Transputer (an early multicpu system designed to
parallel computation had a simple buf effective display -- an LED for for
each CPU indicatiing if the CPU was working or idle, this told you at a
glance if you parallelization algortihim was effective.

-- Charles