Front panel switches - what did they do?

[jwsmobile]

On 5/25/2016 8:48 AM, Jon Elson wrote:
> The only /20s I ever saw were used as offline spool printers and card 
> readers in large 360 shops. 
At our school, University of Missouri, Rolla, they purchased a 360/50 in 
maybe 69 or so.  Because of the nature of the order it couldn't be 
delivered, and a 360/40 was delivered as a starter system.

I think the /30 was still not similar enough to the /50 to be useful to 
get what they needed running so that deliver of the /50 would be 
smooth.  It may have been a capacity problem as well, as the /50 need a 
large for the time disk subsystem.  The comms were to be used for CPS 
which only ran on the /50 I think.

McAuto in St. Louis used a lot of the /20's for their printer farm, and 
that was the only place I ever saw one in use.  They spooled tape to 
printer in the use it was put to.