The Altair, IMSAI, and COSMAC ELF were first generation ROM-less machines that relied on toggle switches to enter a program. The first 6502 machine that I know about was the Apple I which had a ROM monitor. We're there ever any front panel 6502 machines?

Good question. I don't remember any. I thought maybe there were 6502 CPU boards for S-100 back in the day, and some of those would have had front panels by default. But according to s100computers.com there were only homebrew 6502 boards for S-100, no commercial vendors made them.

Edit: There were some trainers which had switches, at least. But maybe not any with front panels. The OSI-300 has been discussed on this forum before IIRC.
http://www.earlycomputers.com/cgi-bin/i ... i?20040601

Edit2: Some searching found this one, which claimed to have a front panel (1977):
http://www.vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread.cfm?id=117

Would the KIM-1 count? It's not front panel but its keypad entry reminds me of front panel computers.

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Cat; the other white meat.

It's close, but it has a ROM with a monitor, so it's a step up from the early front panel machines. In my college microprocessor class we used something similar to the KIM-1, but it had a 6809e instead. Hand assembly and data entry via hex keypad taught me a new appreciation for the NOP instruction.

There's a photo of the CGRS Front Panel System here
http://www.vintagecomputer.net/cgrs/CGR ... system.jpg
Info at http://www.vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread.cfm?id=117

Thanks for the pointer, Tor!

Here is one I have - alas, without knowing very much about it...
http://obsolescence.wix.com/obsolescence#!es65/cy04

If anyone (maybe from Austria, where it comes from) knows more, I'd love to know!

Kind regards,

Oscar.

That one has attractive construction, although I think of a computer with a front panel as being a ROMless one whose boot loader is manually loaded into RAM by way of switches on the front panel.

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http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

I agree, basically a front panel machine looks great, but it is really a user interface of last resort. That CGRS and their associated SBC sounds like it was a 6502 machine in the s100 format, so a front panel was common among those machines at that time. I couldn't find anything about it including a ROM monitor or not.

Oscar, I see Robert Offner is currently reverse-engineering the es65, so there might be more information coming soon.
es-65 6502 Server from Austria