On 2016-May-24, at 9:34 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 demise was really about money. All those lights, switches, wiring, > metalwork, etc. for a full panel was EXPENSIVE.
Well, everything is about money, so to speak. Reducing costs was one motivation for eliminating the front panel, but not what made it practical or feasible to do so.
