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It’s evident, scrolling through that, how drab computers have become. The 360 had a giant control panel with blinken lights, and cool looking tape drives. The

It’s evident, scrolling through that, how drab computers have become. The 360 had a giant control panel with blinken lights, and cool looking tape drives. The Cray looks cool, despite the lack of control panel. Everything else is just a drab rack.

digi_owl 8y ago
Much of that has with miniaturization. Those massive tapes had downright abysmal storage capacities by today's standards. And binkenlights vanished when ICs could switch so fast that the human eye would just see a steady light (much like we can't see a fluorescent lamp blinking).
- dman 8y ago
  I wish my new desktops looked as cool as the ones SGI made back in the day.
- slededit 8y ago
  Those lights were directly connected to the main bus which ran at several hundred khz to the low mhz. You never looked at them while the machine was running except as a way to confirm "something" was happening. You would not see individual pulses but rather they would appear dim or bright depending on activity. Instead the machines had a single step mode where you could force the computer to execute one instruction at a time. Or you could pause the machine completely and manually poke bits into memory yourself. The real death of the front panel was when machines got their own bootloaders and could load their operating system without the operator manually injecting instructions on how to read from external storage directly into memory. This actually happened much later than you might appreciate. This combined with software based debuggers which could be more powerful.
  - masswerk 8y ago
    I'd agree, with the availability of glass monitors for diagnostic purpose and the end of switches for toggling in initial loaders blinkenlights became obsolete. The transition is probably well illustrated by the Datapoint 2200 smart terminal (which famously provided the blueprint for the Intel 8008): An early illustration shows the machine with a DEC mini style row of console switches [1], but when it was announced in 1970, the toggle switches were gone. Ironically, the early 8-bit micros which sprang off from the DP 2200 were probably amongst the last machines to come with toggle switches and console lights (again, because of the lack of built-in diagnostic facilities). [1] Concept illustration of the Datapoint 2200 (John Frassanito, 1969) – arguably, console switches were just what you expected from a "self-respecting" computer at the time, but, by the time the design had progressed from concept to actual hardware, these just didn't make any sense anymore: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2urGdLzMYf8/VnY76lBDUlI/AAAAAAAANS8/uTePme0mk8I/s1600/index16.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2urGdLzMYf8/VnY76lBDUlI/AAAAAAAANS... (From http://bugbookmuseum.blogspot.co.at/2016/01/datapoint-2200-8-bit-computer-update-by.html http://bugbookmuseum.blogspot.co.at/2016/01/datapoint-2200-8... – Mind that Datapoint is then still CTC and the terminal is marked "Veripoint 2200" in the concept illustration.)
DrScump 8y ago
I just missed the 360 era when I became an operator, but the 370 console was similar in sci-fi-ish feel. There was a hexadecimal rotary dial via which you'd set the boot device address, and an actual mechanical switch to boot it up. In contrast, the 3033 operator console was just sort of a glorified terminal. I thought the Quiesce feature was so cool -- you could freeze all programs and OS activity in place, then disconnect and work on any devices or peripherals at will, then resume. In a mere 2-year span, I got to run 370s, 3033s, 308x (including the 4-processor 3084), and 309x not long after I left operations for programming.
- walshemj 8y ago
  The PDP 8 and 11 and cool front panels. I recall on our PDP 11/40 if the separate module that handled the boot failed, you had to toggle the boot loader in by hand using OCD (octal coded decimal) which was a pain.
ASalazarMX 8y ago
The Crays look futuristic even by today's standards. Having a supercomputer that could kill you with poisonous gas is the epitome of futuristic.

digi_owl 8y ago

Much of that has with miniaturization. Those massive tapes had downright abysmal storage capacities by today's standards. And binkenlights vanished when ICs could switch so fast that the human eye would just see a steady light (much like we can't see a fluorescent lamp blinking).

dman 8y ago
I wish my new desktops looked as cool as the ones SGI made back in the day.
slededit 8y ago
Those lights were directly connected to the main bus which ran at several hundred khz to the low mhz. You never looked at them while the machine was running except as a way to confirm "something" was happening. You would not see individual pulses but rather they would appear dim or bright depending on activity. Instead the machines had a single step mode where you could force the computer to execute one instruction at a time. Or you could pause the machine completely and manually poke bits into memory yourself. The real death of the front panel was when machines got their own bootloaders and could load their operating system without the operator manually injecting instructions on how to read from external storage directly into memory. This actually happened much later than you might appreciate. This combined with software based debuggers which could be more powerful.
- masswerk 8y ago
  I'd agree, with the availability of glass monitors for diagnostic purpose and the end of switches for toggling in initial loaders blinkenlights became obsolete. The transition is probably well illustrated by the Datapoint 2200 smart terminal (which famously provided the blueprint for the Intel 8008): An early illustration shows the machine with a DEC mini style row of console switches [1], but when it was announced in 1970, the toggle switches were gone. Ironically, the early 8-bit micros which sprang off from the DP 2200 were probably amongst the last machines to come with toggle switches and console lights (again, because of the lack of built-in diagnostic facilities). [1] Concept illustration of the Datapoint 2200 (John Frassanito, 1969) – arguably, console switches were just what you expected from a "self-respecting" computer at the time, but, by the time the design had progressed from concept to actual hardware, these just didn't make any sense anymore: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2urGdLzMYf8/VnY76lBDUlI/AAAAAAAANS8/uTePme0mk8I/s1600/index16.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2urGdLzMYf8/VnY76lBDUlI/AAAAAAAANS... (From http://bugbookmuseum.blogspot.co.at/2016/01/datapoint-2200-8-bit-computer-update-by.html http://bugbookmuseum.blogspot.co.at/2016/01/datapoint-2200-8... – Mind that Datapoint is then still CTC and the terminal is marked "Veripoint 2200" in the concept illustration.)

DrScump 8y ago

I just missed the 360 era when I became an operator, but the 370 console was similar in sci-fi-ish feel. There was a hexadecimal rotary dial via which you'd set the boot device address, and an actual mechanical switch to boot it up. In contrast, the 3033 operator console was just sort of a glorified terminal. I thought the Quiesce feature was so cool -- you could freeze all programs and OS activity in place, then disconnect and work on any devices or peripherals at will, then resume. In a mere 2-year span, I got to run 370s, 3033s, 308x (including the 4-processor 3084), and 309x not long after I left operations for programming.

walshemj 8y ago
The PDP 8 and 11 and cool front panels. I recall on our PDP 11/40 if the separate module that handled the boot failed, you had to toggle the boot loader in by hand using OCD (octal coded decimal) which was a pain.

ASalazarMX 8y ago

The Crays look futuristic even by today's standards. Having a supercomputer that could kill you with poisonous gas is the epitome of futuristic.