Front panel switches - what did they do?

[dwight]

Most early machines had core memory. If they hadn't crashed
crashed it, the bootstrap was still in memory. I crash my
core regularly.
Dwight


________________________________________
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Swift Griggs <swiftgriggs at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2016 9:54:17 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Front panel switches - what did they do?

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