Front panel switches - what did they do?

[Norman Jaffe]

The IBM 1800 was a much simpler machine than the IBM 360/370, yet it had a pretty complex front panel - 
http://www.dvq.com/1800/photos/paneln.JPG 
... since not all of the registers could be displayed at the same time . 
----- Original Message -----

From: "Paul Berger" <phb.hfx at gmail.com> 
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org 
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2016 10:18:45 AM 
Subject: Re: Front panel switches - what did they do? 

On 2016-05-24 1:54 PM, Swift Griggs wrote: 
> On Tue, 24 May 2016, Charles Anthony wrote: 
>> Honeywell 6180 display panels: 
>> http://jimsoldtoys.blogspot.com/2016/03/honeywell-6180-system-maintenance-panel.html 
> Holy rocker switch, Batman! Is that all for one machine? That looks like a 
> man-machine interface to run a nuclear power plant or something. FOUR 
> panels. The black panel looks uber-cool. That definitely looks like 
> something from a 60's or 70's James bond film. There needs to be a villain 
> about ready to launch a missile standing next to one. 
> 
> Oh and here is a replica of an Apollo launch computer with a component LED 
> display like I was mentioning: 
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/bbXZVcx.jpg 
> 
> ... probably too expensive to embed in a computer system, but still hard 
> to beat for geek aesthetics. 
> 
> -Swift 
> 
> 
The most impressive one I ever saw was when I was in technician school 
we had a tour of the underground in North Bay Ont. where we saw what was 
probably the last running AN/FSQ-7, the operator panel was very impressive. 

Some of the early 370 systems that still had blinkenlights only had one 
or two rows and rotary switchs selected what you where viewing. 
Attached to the switch there was a cylinder behind the panel that showed 
a legend of what the lights meant for the selected location. The also 
had hex dials on the panel for data input. 

Paul.