On Friday 26 November 2010 14:32:58 Alan McKinnon wrote: > One could ask the question "where did the first assembler come from?" > > Just as the first OSes and compilers were written in assembler to > bootstrap C, so the first assemblers were written in hex codes to > bootstrap the assembler. But hex code editors ran software, so where > did the first hex code input gadget come from? > > And the answer to that is that it was written in binary. Yes that's > right - a panel with 16 toggle switches and a few pushbuttons. Those > didn't require software as everything was implemented in hardware.
Except that in my case it was 24 switches, not 16 (this was a dedicated process-control computer for nuclear-powered ships and power stations, 35 years ago). And I sometimes had to make individual holes in the paper tape to "write" or change the code. -- Rgds Peter. Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.
