Front panel switches - what did they do?

[William Donzelli]

> The improved reliablity of LSI logic over discrete and SSI, and the creation of ROM chips of reasonable capacity (to hold the bootstrap or a monitor), would bring about the demise of the blinkenlight  front panel.
> Note that only a couple of the first microcomputers had blinkenlight front panels, and they were pretty much gone from minis and mainframes by the late-70s.

The demise was really about money. All those lights, switches, wiring,
metalwork, etc. for a full panel was EXPENSIVE.

--
Will