Wow... my first exposure to a computer was a Supernova, set up with four ASR-33 Teletypes and running Data General BASIC, for about eight or nine evenings in the spring of 1971. Changed my life--the next year, without a computer to use, I wrote programs in a notebook which I wish I had kept. Thanks, Data General, NSF, and thanks to Dr. Richard V. Andree.
They were marketed for embedded control and data acquisition in laboratories and factories. See the
text on page 5, in "The hardware", where it tells how
you can send your program on paper tape to DG and they send
you back a read-only memory you can plug in - so your
program begins running on power-up without help from an operator.
Silently and spastically splaying taut fingers to get you the fuck out of his office and stop interrupting a man who works for a living, the great Tom West past 19 May 2011:
"The Soul of a New Machine" is a great book, by the way, even if the technology in it is a bit old at this point. Hackers of hardware and/or software should definitely read it.
Another interesting book about the creation of a large system is "Show-stopper", by G. P. Zachary, which describes the building of Windows NT.
