Re: [time-nuts] purpose of time of day display units
jimlux@earthlink.net said:
- It's a crude visual check - your eye/brain is pretty good at catching a
change in the pattern of blinky lights. IN this situation, you'd expect
all the displays to change simultaneously.
Is there a term similar to "eye candy" for geeks?
Many years ago, I designed network gear. That was back when a controller was
a board full of small and medium sized chips rather than a single big chip.
I always put a few LEDs on the board wired up where the microcode could get
at them. Most of the time they were just eye candy. But occasionally I
would borrow one and hack the microcode so a LED would be interesting on a
scope.
--
These are my opinions. I hate spam.
I have done something similar to one of my cars so that, for example, an
LED that tells me when the a/c compressor's electric clutch cycles on and
off. Things like this are partly eye candy, partly educational (things
don't always work quite like I assume they do), and partly a valuable
diagnostic tool when something breaks.
Jeremy
On Sun, Jan 22, 2017 at 6:01 PM Hal Murray hmurray@megapathdsl.net wrote:
jimlux@earthlink.net said:
- It's a crude visual check - your eye/brain is pretty good at
catching a
change in the pattern of blinky lights. IN this situation, you'd expect
all the displays to change simultaneously.
Is there a term similar to "eye candy" for geeks?
Many years ago, I designed network gear. That was back when a controller
was
a board full of small and medium sized chips rather than a single big chip.
I always put a few LEDs on the board wired up where the microcode could get
at them. Most of the time they were just eye candy. But occasionally I
would borrow one and hack the microcode so a LED would be interesting on a
scope.
--
These are my opinions. I hate spam.
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On 01/22/2017 07:26 PM, Hal Murray wrote:
Many years ago, I designed network gear. That was back when a controller was
a board full of small and medium sized chips rather than a single big chip.
I always put a few LEDs on the board wired up where the microcode could get
at them. Most of the time they were just eye candy. But occasionally I
would borrow one and hack the microcode so a LED would be interesting on a
scope.
Ah, just like those status LEDs on PCBs, subsystems, and modules in
properly-engineered equipment (both old and modern minicomputers,
aerospace equipment, VME and VXI systems, some other servers [some of
HP's small servers, at least, even feature a neat diagram on the front
panel, with status LEDs indicating the status of key subsystems or
components thereof], etc.) Apple's hardware obviously is an offender in
this regard---I remember once having to service an iMac (or some other
modern Apple PC), and I seriously could not figure out how to turn it
on, and when I had to temporarily shut off the power distribution
system, I could not figure out what the PC's power state was (to ensure
a graceful shutdown of the system).
-Ruslan
I do stuff like that too. I always like to use an I2C connected LCD
display while developing code on any micro processor project. I might take
the actual LCD off at the end but I always leave the signal pins in place.
I might need to debug the device again some time and then I can find
another display. I see a lot of this in commercial products, for example a
USB connection on the back of my TV, only for diagnostic use.
Same with "heartbeat" LEDs, they let you know the device is cycling through
its main pressing loop and not hung.
On Sun, Jan 22, 2017 at 4:26 PM, Hal Murray hmurray@megapathdsl.net wrote:
Is there a term similar to "eye candy" for geeks?
Many years ago, I designed network gear. That was back when a controller
was
a board full of small and medium sized chips rather than a single big chip.
I always put a few LEDs on the board wired up where the microcode could get
at them. Most of the time they were just eye candy. But occasionally I
would borrow one and hack the microcode so a LED would be interesting on a
scope.
--
These are my opinions. I hate spam.
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/
mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
--
Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California