On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 9:34 AM, William Donzelli <wdonze...@gmail.com> 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 demise was really about money. All those lights, switches, wiring, > metalwork, etc. for a full panel was EXPENSIVE. > > Yep. Later model models of the Honeywell 6180 replaced all of those display panels with a minicomputer that generated video terminal displays of the data. -- Charles