Is it possible to program a whole computer from scratch?

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Christopher Burke


Yes, it is totally possible to program a computer from scratch; I’ve done it many times. Early microcomputers didn’t have a BIOS ROM, and came with nothing but a switch panel and built-in hardware to store numbers into successive memory locations and then run whatever instruction was at address 0x0000.

You’d use the switches to enter a simple paper tape reading program. Then you’d load a more sophisticated program that you’d previously written, from tape. The program on tape might be a disk loader, or it might be a BASIC interpreter, or it might be a very simple operating system. You’d use that to program or to load in something even more sophisticated.

You can try this out yourself by looking online for a PDP-11/20, Altair 8800, or COSMAC ELF (among others) emulator.

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Image: MITS Altair 8800



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missscreen

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The program that is stored on the tape could be a disk loader, it could be an interpreter for the BASIC programming language, or it could be a very basic operating system. You would use that to either program anything or load in something that was much more complex.
 
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