On 2020-01-01 09:15 AM, Anton Aylward wrote:
I consider that tech "bling" to be the mark of a clueless idiot. What about the bank of toggle switches with nixie lights above them? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NuCHQyaOaw
I don't think there is a toggle switch anywhere on my computer, not even one at the back by the power cord. Except for the DVD drive all the lights are behind black plastic and only light up at boot time doing POST.
I can understand an aircraft cockpit panel; it's not as if you can get out and look' and there are so many parts you need to know about. How many parts in a modern computer? The fewer the better! And lets make some of that 'fewer' the 'bling'.
Those were functional. Back in those days, that panel was used to monitor and control the computer. There was one system, Phillips DS714, at my company, that even had a speaker so that the operator could hear how it was running. You'd get used to the normal sounds and be able to recognize something abnormal. You can see the speaker and volume control in the upper left of the photo. https://ds714.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/hello-world/ A lot of my work was on Data General Eclipse computers, where you'd use the switches to specify which device you wanted to boot from and I'd also use the switches and lights to step through the micro code, when working on a CPU problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Eclipse Later computers, such as the VAX 11/780 (I worked on them too) used a separate LSI-11microcomputer as the "front panel". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX-11 Here is my first computer, an IMSAI 8080. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSAI_8080 Those switches and LEDs were needed, just to get things started. Back in those days, I called "turn key" computers "turkey" as real computers had switches and lights. ;-) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org