On 05/24/2016 11:34 AM, William Donzelli wrote:
The improved reliablity of LSI logic over discrete and SSI, and the creation of
ROM chips of reasonable capacity (to hold the bootstrap or a monitor), would
bring about the demise of the blinkenlight front panel.
Note that only a couple of the first microcomputers had blinkenlight front
panels, and they were pretty much gone from minis and mainframes by the
late-70s.
The early PDP-11s had a diode matrix ROM for the boot
memory. You could change the boot code with a wire cutter
and soldering iron.
Jon
