I think the computers got so fast so that having blinking light wasn’t feasible. They would be on all the time.
Sent from my iPhone > On Sep 23, 2022, at 16:27, Jon Elson via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > On 9/23/22 11:53, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >> >>>> On Sep 23, 2022, at 12:45 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk >>>> <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: >>> >>>> On 9/22/22 22:56, ben via cctalk wrote: >>> >>>> Blinking lights tended to be for computers of the future. >>>> World maps with lights where nuclear missiles could strike >>>> seem to be movie props only. >>> I thought it curious that many 1960s-1970s supercomputers lacked front >>> panels and blinking lights altogether. (e.g. Cray I, CDC >>> Cyber/600/700, etc.) Indeed, the Cray couldn't even spin a tape without >>> help from another system doing the I/O. >> Those are good examples, but is it "many" or just those two and maybe one or >> two more? For example, Burroughs and IBM mainframes were both very much >> "lights and switches" control panel type machines. For that matter, so were >> the other CDC products; the 6000 series was a bit of an outlier I think. > > Blinky light front panels went mostly out of style on later machines. The > 360/85 (prototype of the 370/165) went to a scheme with a lamp panel > projected onto a microfiche viewer that combined legends from the fiche with > the lamp image. Turning knobs to select a different fiche page brought up > different signals to the lamps. This was a stark departure from the IBM > Model 195 panel, which was seriously over the top! You needed a road atlas > to even FIND the indicator you wanted to look at! > > The VAX 11/780 had no panel, just four indicators and a key switch. The > console driven by an LSI-11 was pretty powerful, though. The KL10B used a > PDP-11 as the console and to interface non-MassBus peripherals. > > As for the defense maps, they really DID exist. Our university had some bits > of SAGE, and one of the things was the big map projector. The way the thing > worked was a small CRT was projected onto movie film, the film ran through a > developer, and then was projected onto a large screen. I don't know what the > delay for film processing was, but it must have been 30 seconds or so. > > Jon >
