front panel display for a modern PC

[jd]

Chuck Guzis さんは書きました:
> 
> To this day, I remember inviting a member of the fair sex to my 
> apartment to see my newly-assembled MITS 8800 happily running some 
> blinkenlights program.  Her reaction was devastating--"THAT'S NOT A 
> COMPUTER--THAT'S A TOY!".
> 

What did you expect? Ok, I know, I know; boys love to show off their 
toys and all. Ze blinkenlichten iz zoooooo beeyooteefool!

Girls just don't get it!

All those computers with all those blinkenlichten on the telly and the 
movies were really cool, fascinating and hypnotic. Practically every 
kid--I mean, every boy, wanted blinkenlichten too, right?

Besides, in the "Real World", blinkenlichten tell we who love them 
what the machine is thinking about (or not) at any given moment, 
right? It's better than having a black box that won't talk to you when 
it has a problem, if it talks at all. Between the days of the common 
blinkenlichten and effusively talkative software, there was that 
period of hell when systems contained very terse code that wouldn't do 
anything if something went wrong--wouldn't talk, wouldn't run, etc., 
adn. It practically took a computer psychic to figure out the problem. 
Besides being sooooooo beeyooteefool, they had a very practical 
purpose. I think they would still serve a useful purpose, even if it 
is only on extremely rare occasions. And they are cool and quite 
retro. Well, you might even be able to turn off the room lights...

> Mencken was right. "How little it takes to make life unbearable: a 
> pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh."
> 

Something can be done about the first two, though.

> Cheers?

???

Not if my wife sees this.

==
jd