Jeff Jonas discussed the IBM 1130 front panel. He noted well-labeled controls and computer operations to the single instruction or cycle or clock. It's good information. But Jeff ends with this:
All that was lost with the microprocessor :-( All the data busses and registers are internal with no pins, thus relying on a monitor to view/alter registers. That's the glory of REAL font panels: they're all HARDWARE, they can't lie :-)
The MITS Altair 8800, the IMSAI 8080, the MITS 680, the Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1; all supported MITS-class front panels. The earliest 1802 computers, same era, had a byte-level, single clock/instruction front panel (and little else). Home-built early 8008 and 8080 systems, often included front panels. Terminals were expensive, memory was limited, and front panels helped debug the hardware. People looking back today, don't appreciate the limited resources (and limited wealth) during 1970's micro computing. MITS people may not have known about the IBM 1130 front panel. But certainly, Ed Roberts knew about the Data General NOVA, which sat in his office, and which has a front panel. (David Greelish interview with Roberts.) The MITS front panel, like the Nova, permitted single-cycle and single-instruction operation of the 8080 microprocessor. It could not display registers, those are internal to the 8080. So, front panels were not "lost with the microprocessor". They simply fell out of favor, by the late 1970's. Briefly: as microcomputers became more powerful and hardware stabilized, software debugging was cheaper and preferable to hardware debugging. Computers designed for the office and home, were styled like office equipment. I lived through the era, it's hard to prove why something stopped happening. On "hardware panels can't lie". They can fail too. And some devices won't run at toggle-clock speeds. Problems may not manifest on a front-panel if they are intermittent. Front panels are a tool, like other tools they have utility or not. Should I say, "all that was lost, when personal computers became commonplace"? Things change, sometimes there's reasons. Regards, Herb Johnson retrotechnology.com -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com or try later herbjohnson AT comcast DOT net