On Mon, 18 Jan 1999 10:05:26 -0700  Herb Peyerl wrote:

> [I've Cc'd tech-kern in the event that someone thinks it's a good idea and
> goes ahead to discuss it and implement it]
> 
> "Dan Dockery" <danarchy@endeneu.com>  wrote:
>  > >options         BLINK           # blink the led on supported machines
>  > >
>  > >ok, it does indeed blink, but what is the purpose? Accept for the fact that
>  > >now I can't tell by looking at the led whether the machine is down or not.
>  > 
>  > It looks neat.  Isn't that purpose enough?  Some of us like our blinky
>  > LED's...
> 
> Something I've always wanted and have thought about writing is a
> generic LED driver that basically collects blink events from various
> sympathetic drivers and an MD driver that can drive whatever LED 
> hardware is available on a machine.. Then a userland 'ledctl' that
> connects various events to various led's.

I was talking to one of the guys here at work about just this the other
day.  He's not a NetBSD person, and it's always dismayed him that the
pmaxes running NetBSD don't turn any of the LEDs on after the kernel has
booted, and he doesn't know which machines are up or down :-)

Simon.