darrelj@sdcrdcf.UUCP (06/12/84)
When, ten years ago, I had to use an IBM 370/158 as an augmentation to ISUs 360/65, I had both side by side. The 65 had about 200 lights (which were multiplexed by a dial into 1000 signals monitorable) and about 100 toggle switches (I'm looking at the drawing in the manual). The 158 had 5 buttons and 2 lights (something like Power on, off, load microcode, enable setting clock, enable remote diagnostics). The front panel was a collection of full-screen displays on the console CRT, and behaved (sort of) like a full-screen editor for machine state. All the registers and whatever were shown in hex, it could show 64 bytes of memory at one time (instead of 64 bits), all registers at once, and all data/command entry worked from both keyboard and light pen (there was a number pad on screen for the light pen); finally, the screen could even be dumped to an attached printer. The flashing lights were pretty, and would give you a "feel" for the activity in a RUNNING machine, but when it came to actually having to USE the front panel when you've really killed things, the CRT on the 158 was far easier to use [quick, what address is o**o**o* *o**o**o *oo*o*** :-] -- Darrel J. Van Buer, PhD System Development Corp. 2500 Colorado Ave Santa Monica, CA 90406 (213)820-4111 x5449 ...{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdccsu3,trw-unix}!sdcrdcf!darrelj VANBUER@USC-ECL.ARPA