3 ms·

Much of that has with miniaturization. Those massive tapes had downright abysmal storage capacities by today's standards. And binkenlights vanished when ICs c

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.)

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.)