mabgarstin (03/24/83)
This doesn't have anything to do with movies but since there's been so
much talk here about computer front panels and flashing lights I just had to
share this little experience with you.
I was once the supervisor of an IBM 1710 ( a 1620 with headers on ) and it
had a large impressive front panel that really gave off the light show when
one would compile or run the local version of spacewar. The line printer and
the console typwriter were kind of flacky and would die every so often. Since
I was doing a lot of work on the little beast when ever any of these devices
went "bits up" on me I would have to some how divert output the other device.
One day it happened, the worse, both the line printer and the console
typewriter decided that Friday had come and that it was gpoing to be a long
weekend. In desperation I punched up a program in machine code and cold loaded
the sucker from the card reader (you could do that with these machines without
a console typewriter). The program would accept code input from the front
panel toggle switches (we had about 12 of them to throw), toss this into the
input spooler and trap any output and display it one machine code digit at a
time in the lights of the address register on the front panel by branching to
the address whos high order digits were the number to be shown and then just
loop there until a toggle switch was thrown.
This was a real grungy way to run things but when you're hooked on computers
like how I was you go to extremes. It all looked real impressive to watch
though, throwing switches madly and reading console lights while processes
were on the fly.
MAB
(much more subdued now in
the graphics lab at the
University of Waterloo)