flashing lights

[darrelj at sdcrdcf.UUCP]

When, ten years ago, I had to use an IBM 370/158 as an augmentation to ISUs
360/65, I had both side by side.
The 65 had about 200 lights (which were multiplexed by a dial into 1000
signals monitorable) and about 100 toggle switches (I'm looking at the
drawing in the manual).
The 158 had 5 buttons and 2 lights (something like Power on, off, load
microcode, enable setting clock, enable remote diagnostics).  The front
panel was a collection of full-screen displays on the console CRT, and
behaved (sort of) like a full-screen editor for machine state.  All the
registers and whatever were shown in hex, it could show 64 bytes of memory
at one time (instead of 64 bits), all registers at once, and all
data/command entry worked from both keyboard and light pen (there was a
number pad on screen for the light pen); finally, the screen could even be
dumped to an attached printer.

The flashing lights were pretty, and would give you a "feel" for the
activity in a RUNNING machine, but when it came to actually having to USE
the front panel when you've really killed things, the CRT on the 158 was far
easier to use  [quick, what address is o**o**o* *o**o**o *oo*o*** :-]

-- 
Darrel J. Van Buer, PhD
System Development Corp.
2500 Colorado Ave
Santa Monica, CA 90406
(213)820-4111 x5449
...{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdccsu3,trw-unix}!sdcrdcf!darrelj
VANBUER at USC-ECL.ARPA