Front panel switches - what did they do?

[Swift Griggs]

On Tue, 24 May 2016, william degnan wrote:
> Here's a power point pres I did at VCF-E4, this will get you started. 
> Using Altair 680b front panel in basic terms is covered a few slides in. 
> http://vintagecomputer.net/vcf4/How_to_Session/

There are some nice clean photos in that presentation. So, it was binary 
with some hexadecimal addressing. I like the slide entitled "How to test 
Machine Language Using a Program Listing Using Toggle Switches". That's 
pretty hard core. I'm surprised they didn't at least use component 
displays with LEDs to show the values rather than reading it straight off 
some blinkenlights. Maybe those weren't around yet or were too expensive.

-Swift