On Wed, 1 Jan 2020 10:11:32 -0500
James Knott
On 2020-01-01 10:03 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
In the "dark ages" a technician had to load the boot code with a bank of swithces, instruction by instruction. Write a word, flip a switch to load, then the next word. Finally, another button to "run". Then the machine knew how to load things from something else (cards, tape, whatever). Apparently, they had no "bios" or no bios boot code.
Anyone else here remember the PDP-8 RIM loader? Or the IPL button on mainframes?
Yup
IPL - "Initial Program Load"
I worked on one machine where the clock speed was set by a twenty-turn pot, and IIRC you had to slow it down whilst the boot sequence ran and then crank it up to full speed once the OS was fully running. Oh, and tapes used to whizz backwards and forwards when the OS was using them to load overlays. Many tape systems could only read forwards so had to be completely rewound and then searched forwards to access any earlier blocks on the tape. I think some of the DEC systems were able to rewind one block at a time? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org