IBM 360/44:One unusual feature of the Model 44's console was a rotary knob to select floating point precision; reducing the precision increased speed.
Funny story: this is actually how it's implemented in Javascript to this day.
Bizarrely, the units on the knob are bits in the significand, divided by 4. For comparison, modern floating point would be a setting of 6 for single precision and 13.25 for double precision.
The second console function was "operator intervention":
program debugging tasks such as examining and modifying memory or registers and setting breakpoints. The Model 30 console controls below were used for operator intervention. To display memory contents, the operator selected an address with the four hexadecimal dials on the left and pushed the Display button, displaying data on the lights above the dials. To modify memory, the operator entered a byte using the two hex dials on the far right and pushed the Store button. (Although the Model 30 had a 32-bit architecture, it operated on one byte at a time, trading off speed for lower cost.) The Address Compare knob in the upper right set a breakpoint.
If IDE developers were as obsessed with skeuomorphism as music software developers, this is what Xcode would look like:
Maybe that's not such a bad idea, actually. Xcode should have Winamp skins.
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