Front panel switches - what did they do?

[Brent Hilpert]

> On 5/24/2016 12:15 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
>> On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 1:08 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
>>> Yes, but there was a trademarked name for the process that slips my
>>> mind.  Capable of very high densities.
>> 
>> Multiwire?


On 2016-May-24, at 1:26 PM, jwsmobile wrote:

> We bought a Multiwire job on our clone of the Microdata 1600 and the tech it used, I think, was welded wires laid in muck that was soft.
> 
> They would fab up a firm carrier board with all the thru-holes set, then put down a soft pliable layer of epoxy(??).  They would weld one of the wires to an appropriate thru-hole then the wire would be pushed into the media and routed to the terminus.  Similar to wirewrap process from the routing requirements (keep number of connections to any post / thruhole adhering to design rules).  But when it was complete, you could see all the wires thru the goo they used after it hardened or was set up.
> 
> The set we had worked well, but was about 3500 bucks for an approximately 8 x 10 board with a 130pin edge card connector.  Kinda pricy.  However, if you had a working design, it was overnight turnaround with a PC.


I haven't so much as seen a multi-wire board since ca. 1980, even in all the scrap and junk and surplus I've seen in the decades since.
The primary example I recall from then was a big disk controller board for a TI-990/10.