have
I feel like such a weenie! My first personal computer was a SWTPC 6800 that had a bootstrap ROM. No toggle switches on the front panel for address and data. My greatest hardware accomplishment at that time was to add solenoids and fishing line to an IBM Selectric---which my girlfriend then used to type here MS thesis with a very primitive word processor. I also wrote a simple file system for a fast digital cassette drive that I used for a few years until floppy drives became affordable.
I started real-time programming on a DG Nova machine. It had 5MB
14" disk packs and processor boards made out of TTL logic. The CPU rack was quite heavy. I pulled some muscles severely one time when the unit slid out of the rack somewhat more easily than expected. You seldom had to key in startup sequences, since it used core memory, and you could simply set up the address of the boot loader and hoped it was still in core.Mark Borgerson