Front Panels - Thoughts

[rod]

Hi Tony
            I seem to remember, certainly in OEM land there were dev. 
systems with front panels and production systems without.
In other words  the front panel was option and could be fitted.
Rod(PanelMan)Smallwood


On 31/10/15 18:40, tony duell wrote:
>> Hi Guys
>>            Sitting here doing the overlays for the 8/e silk screen run.
>> I had a thought. Including all makes of computer old and new.
>> What about a front panel with lights and switches for systems
>> that never had one and could have done with one?
>> Which computer would you nominate?
> The obvious ones for me would be those DEC machines that never had
> a real panel -- things like the 11/34 which has a keypad (toggle switches
> and LEDs are much nicer!) and those with 'Console ODT' and a serial
> terminal. I would like a real pront panel on my 11/44 and VAX11/730 machines.
>
> And the PERQ. At least front panel access to the microcode, and prefereably
> to the main program memory as well.
>
>> I'm not about to do anything about it.
>> But the answers should be interesting
> I don't blame you!. In most cases you can't just add a frontpanel on later, especially
> if you want access to internal CPU registers, etc. To add a frontpanel you would probably
> have to redesign bits of the CPU. Good luck in adding a panel to the PERQ main memory
> which does not cause problems with RasterOps...
>
> -tony