From: michael.wojcik@merant.com (Michael Wojcik) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: blinkenlight tricks (was Re: Design) Date: 24 May 2001 22:49:11 GMT Organization: MERANT Inc. Lines: 42 Message-ID: <9ek35701d6i@enews2.newsguy.com> References: <3B08F9A1.BD8DF461@skynet.be> <9edtj4$llg$5@bob.news.rcn.net> <3B0A996F.477A5C29@skynet.be> <9ee22m$llg$19@bob.news.rcn.net> <3B0BACC3.55075D8A@skynet.be> <9egkdr$p80$4@ausnews.austin.ibm.com> <3B0C1FDC.EDB3DE50@skynet.be> Reply-To: michael.wojcik@merant.com NNTP-Posting-Host: p-540.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: xrn 9.00 Originator: mww@lorelei Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.cwix.com!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!mww Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:81955 In article <3B0C1FDC.EDB3DE50@skynet.be>, Jan Atle Ramsli writes: > [PC blinkenlights] > There is little sense in hooking the bus-signals up to a 100Mhz bus, but > some signals make good blinkenlights, in particular the ones from the > network adapter. > > Remove the tinu LED on the adapter, and solder in two wires, connect > them to the 'turbo' light on a now obsolescent PC case. > The light will blink when there is network traffic and looks really neat Before and for a little while after the IBM RS/6000 went GA, IBM had some porting sites set up to help the early-release customers port their software to the new machines. TCS (Technical Computing Services) in the Cambridge Scientific Center was one. (Lynn, were you involved with porting support?) One customer griped that the 6000s didn't have hard drive activity lights. Drive lights aren't terribly meaningful on a multiuser machine with a disk-caching OS, but since it's often easier to satisfy a customer than to educate them, Bruce Greer (IIRC) wrote a little daemon that would occasionally write random numbers to the 3-digit 7-segment LED display on the front of the system unit, and told the customer that it was displaying the current disk activity. I later adapted it into a program that displayed the run queue depth on the display, which has been circulating on comp.unix.aix for years. -- Michael Wojcik michael.wojcik@merant.com Comms Development, MERANT (block capitals are a company mandate) Department of English, Miami University Pseudoscientific Nonsense Quote o' the Day: From the scientific standpoint, until these energies are directly sensed by the evolving perceptions of the individual, via the right brain, inner-conscious, intuitive faculties, scientists will never grasp the true workings of the universe's ubiquitous computer system. -- Noel Huntley ###### From: John W Hall Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: blinkenlight tricks (was Re: Design) Message-ID: References: <3B08F9A1.BD8DF461@skynet.be> <9edtj4$llg$5@bob.news.rcn.net> <3B0A996F.477A5C29@skynet.be> <9ee22m$llg$19@bob.news.rcn.net> <3B0BACC3.55075D8A@skynet.be> <9egkdr$p80$4@ausnews.austin.ibm.com> <3B0C1FDC.EDB3DE50@skynet.be> <9ek35701d6i@enews2.newsguy.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.8/32.548 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 8 Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 04:06:00 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 161.184.43.140 X-Trace: news1.telusplanet.net 990763560 161.184.43.140 (Thu, 24 May 2001 22:06:00 MDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 22:06:00 MDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!paloalto-snf1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!newsfeed.stanford.edu!cyclone.bc.net!newsfeed.telusplanet.net!news1.telusplanet.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:82128 The 1401 had a stop light/button that lit up when the program reached its end. The Swedish CE contingent on our training course in Sindelfingen wired up a flashbulb (the old filament/aluminium wire type) to the Stop light, taking care to shunt off enough of the 'glow' current to prevent premature random firing. Of course they had to arrange flashbulb replacement, but their scheme was a great hit in the lab. ###### From: dscheidt@tumbolia.com (David Scheidt) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: blinkenlight tricks (was Re: Design) Date: 25 May 2001 06:49:01 GMT Lines: 19 Sender: David Scheidt Message-ID: <9ekv8t$h3m$1@bob.news.rcn.net> References: <3B08F9A1.BD8DF461@skynet.be> <9edtj4$llg$5@bob.news.rcn.net> <3B0A996F.477A5C29@skynet.be> <9ee22m$llg$19@bob.news.rcn.net> <3B0BACC3.55075D8A@skynet.be> <9egkdr$p80$4@ausnews.austin.ibm.com> <3B0C1FDC.EDB3DE50@skynet.be> <9ek35701d6i@enews2.newsguy.com> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVZtW7IDgLU2Mw14+DqvVnjZefDBA7vG+b3S5bkHG1t1mi8O3n0BE+70 X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 May 2001 06:49:01 GMT User-Agent: tin/1.4.4-20000803 ("Vet for the Insane") (UNIX) (FreeBSD/4.2-STABLE (i386)) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:81940 Michael Wojcik wrote: : One customer griped that the 6000s didn't have hard drive activity : lights. Drive lights aren't terribly meaningful on a multiuser : machine with a disk-caching OS, but since it's often easier to Well, I've done some system tuning by looking at the drive activity lights on pretty current HP stuff. There was a light for every disk, so it was pretty easy to figure out what busses were most heavily used, and do some tuning to move things around a bit. It was also handy for figuring out why a SCSI bus was hung, and which disk needed to be removed and reinserted to fix it. -- dscheidt@tumbolia.com Bipedalism is only a fad. ###### From: jcmorris@jmorris-pc.MITRE.ORG (Joe Morris) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: blinkenlight tricks (was Re: Design) Date: 25 May 2001 15:16:07 GMT Organization: The MITRE Corporation Lines: 26 Message-ID: <9elsvn$p31$1@top.mitre.org> References: <3B08F9A1.BD8DF461@skynet.be> <9edtj4$llg$5@bob.news.rcn.net> <3B0A996F.477A5C29@skynet.be> <9ee22m$llg$19@bob.news.rcn.net> <3B0BACC3.55075D8A@skynet.be> <9egkdr$p80$4@ausnews.austin.ibm.com> <3B0C1FDC.EDB3DE50@skynet.be> <9ek35701d6i@enews2.newsguy.com> Reply-To: jcmorris@mitre.org NNTP-Posting-Host: jmorris-pc.mitre.org X-Trace: top.mitre.org 990803767 25697 128.29.251.13 (25 May 2001 15:16:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.mitre.org NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 May 2001 15:16:07 GMT X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 (NOV) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.tufts.edu!blanket.mitre.org!news.mitre.org!jmorris-pc.MITRE.ORG!jcmorris Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:81870 John W Hall writes: >The 1401 had a stop light/button that lit up when the program reached >its end. The Swedish CE contingent on our training course in >Sindelfingen wired up a flashbulb (the old filament/aluminium wire >type) to the Stop light, taking care to shunt off enough of the 'glow' >current to prevent premature random firing. Of course they had to >arrange flashbulb replacement, but their scheme was a great hit in the >lab. Wow! A hack that hasn't been posted to a.f.c in the past... ...and one that I can easily imagine. Someone probably was either fired or promoted as a result of this. And for the age-challenged readership here, many flashbulb designs that lasted well into the 60s used Edison sockets -- and thus would fit in a standard American light fixture. I would hate to figure out how many #40 flashbulbs I went through (along with occasional #0 monsters) before I finally got a flashgun that took the smaller #5 or 25. IOW, the bulbs were large, and produced quite a flash. I can just see some bigwig giving a VIP tour just as the program encountered a halt opcode... Joe Morris