Editing Booting (section)

==== Booting the first microcomputers ====
The earliest microcomputers, such as the [[Altair 8800]] (released first in 1975) and an even earlier, similar machine (based on the Intel 8008 CPU) had no bootstrapping hardware as such.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=896&st=1 |title=Oldcomputers: Altair 8800b |access-date=10 December 2019 |archive-date=2020-01-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200103181235/https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=896 |url-status=live}}</ref> When powered-up, the CPU would see memory that would contain random data. The front panels of these machines carried toggle switches for entering addresses and data, one switch per bit of the computer memory word and address bus. Simple additions to the hardware permitted one memory location at a time to be loaded from those switches to store bootstrap code. Meanwhile, the CPU was kept from attempting to execute memory content. Once correctly loaded, the CPU was enabled to execute the bootstrapping code. This process, similar to that used for several earlier minicomputers, was tedious and had to be error-free.<ref>{{cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zbtNImG2NE |title=Altair 8800 loads 4K BASIC from paper tape |author-first=Glenn |author-last=Holmer |access-date=2016-05-02 |archive-date=2019-07-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190730073047/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zbtNImG2NE&gl=US&hl=en |url-status=live}}</ref>