Why not? Some other CCRs only have one display. Take the Classic Kiss for example. One display reading all three cell. Only manual control. From my perspective what he did give you great experience in the following areas:
1) You now have a feel for how fast or slowly the PO2 changes at depth when running manual.
2) you now have a feel for how long to hold down the O2 manual injector for a given change in PO2.
3) You now have a sense for how fast the PO2 changes when under stess or workload.
4) All the above should give you more confidence that you can run the CCR instead of the CCR running you.
A valuable lesson.
John
Quote: (Originally Posted by
SkubaJim)

The battery died on the primary handset while on a training dive at 40 feet. I looked at that dead hammerhead, then at my instructor and gave him the abort dive sign, time to go. He said no. (can they do that?) So, I took out the secondary and ran the thing manually for the rest of the shallow dive. He also had me shoot a lift bag, hand off the BO bottle reg to him, restow the liftbag, etc, etc while watching the PO2 and keeping myself within parameters. Afterwards he told me to think of my rebreather as the HAL 9000 in 2001-A Space Odyssey. It is trying to help but sometimes it gets confused and will try to kill you instead. You just have to take over. Sounds reasonable to me, I asked him what his computers name was..... he said "Chucky."
.