<I'd say it's not so much a matter of there being "no need for them"
<(front panels), so much as the fact that machines are so fast any more
<that I'm not sure how much use they'd be, especially with
<multi-tasking operating systems. Before the address and data LEDs
<stabilized with any useful information, it would be somewhere else.
In some respects that is true even back then when instruction cycle
time were in the 2-10uS bracket. You did get to see the average
addresses that were freqently accessed. However, front pannels also
posessed the ability to stop the cpu, and single step or single
instruction advance it. A true front panel on a PC would have to be able
to do that and that is no small trick considering the caches, Dram refresh
and other dynamic timings.
< -Bill Richman
<
http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bill_r
< (Home of the COSMAC Elf Simulator!)
Cosmac ELF sim? Humm, I still rin one of those chips for fun.
Allison
Received on Sun Feb 22 1998 - 21:42:55 GMT