Was talking with a coworker today about an old computer I had 20 years ago which was an Everex Step 386 which had a neat Real-Time Alphanumeric Status Display. I remember it displaying tracks as you format floppy disks and drive letters and sector information etc.
Was wondering if there was a real "Useful" purpose for this status display feature other than old school bling of cool rapid displaying of information of what drive is being accessed and what sectors etc? I should have kept this computer but back 20 years ago it was barely able to run AOL version 2.5 on the 20Mhz 386 CPU with a 14.4 modem. I had a better 486DX4 100Mhz and so I gave it away to the neighbor who unfortunately trashed it trying to install a better main board into it and then when it was gutted then realized that wasn't going to work.
. Before I gave it away to him I installed Windows 95 on it with 4MB RAM and the drive was flashing like crazy information on this alpha display as Windows 95 had so many files it addressed when booting information was displayed on the display faster than you could make sense of it and the hard drive chattered loudly as the heads were moved along the platters.
Here is a link to a picture of the computer. The yellow display which I think was a VF Tube matrix for the alpha display was a neat thing but I didn't see a point in it other than you can see what sector or track was being accessed. Very few computers had this feature, so maybe it was just something to wow customers into buying it while the feature itself was completely worthless. However maybe I am assuming wrong and it had a useful purpose that I am unaware of...
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_tkm9v4opNG8/TJ0vZ35QWKI/AAAAAAAADuk/1jmMR6LvYlY/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/Everex+386+flyer+from+1989.jpg
