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and no other devices. Are you able to bootstrap this PC to the point where it has some user-controlled software, that could be expanded upon by you or anyone else? As far as I know, the answer is no. (I don't know how to do it, unless the BIOS was specially made for this).
What percentage of our computers are we able to program without using other fully-working computers to put the data in? What does this mean for the overall health of the system if there is a disruption, or software quality degrades?
In the minicomputer days, you had a row of switches on the front that you could use to input machine code to get yourself to a state of minimal ability to load more software. We just don't do that any more... https://i1.wp.com/avitech.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/11-70-front-panel-Medium.jpg …
This is normal. In the physical world too, you cannot manufacture, assemble or service our current machines without contemporary tooling. Flintstones or hammers or screwdrivers will no longer do. Technology is a mighty stream, with all its parts moving in tandem.
I have both an IMSAI 8080 and an Apple //e I could bootstrap, but I recognize that wasn’t the question.
Every time I want to dive deeply into building my own OS or kernel from scratch, I'm always left feeling unsatisfied that .. well it can't ever be from scratch! It's a bummer, I always have to learn a laundry list of tools first or build off pre-existing libraries.
Jon, this surely must be your purpose in life: Give current generation kids their C64 experience, by: 1. Finish JAI lang. 2. Develop a risc/mips/arm system that: A. Boots into JAI. B. Is less complex than a phone, but more complex than a fantasy console. SAVE THEM!
None. Without input switches or a simple machine code monitor input in BIOS we have no way to get enough code into the machine to even boot it. It's only a few hundred instructions to boot from a floppy on DOS, but there's no way to enter those instructions.
With my old OSI C1P I could have hand assembled some code and entered it using the in-built machine code monitor a byte at a time. By the time the IBM PC is out, this is no longer viable, and impossible today.
Of course the same is true of the hardware. You can't design or build a modern chip foundry without powerful computers, which require modern chips. Bootstrapping the process would take decades even with perfect knowledge of all the relevant tech.
All the complexity in software on the OS/drivers level is the price we pay for PCs being totally modular. I guess consumers apprieciate the modularity, and don't care that it makes our jobs much harder.
BTW Macs are closer to the ideal you're talking about - you're still burdened with a heavy OS, but at least you've got to support only a finite and fairly small number of hardware configs. This should make software on OSX less buggy that on Windows - I wonder if that's the case.
I got what you want to point out, but the only reasonable thing that would urge me to start from scratch like this, is if I would not "trust" the computer where I am writing my bootstrap on (which could be a viable thought)
As an analogy, if you can already produce steel, you can pretty sure produce bronze as well. Why throw away the machines that allow you to cast steel? You can start from scratch, but that is just there for the experience, archeology, or going to the forest without bringing things
This is more general than computers or software: creating ICs without complex, digitally controlled machines? mining, processing and smelting steel without steel-built tools and factories?
Every industry that is self-sustained has this problem, and with endless supply chains nearly every industry is at least partially self-sustained.
It's not a bad idea to build with resilience in mind, but it's a trade off. Do we need to go to hardware switches? What if the EFI shell would let you input assembled code? (maybe it does that already - I don't know)
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