3 ms·

Yeah, I was just wondering what the alternative was, before Visi On, and then 1984's Macintosh? Didn't Apple ][ just boot right into BASIC (or Oregon Trail, as

• michrassena 8y ago
  If there was no hard drive controller installed, the Apple II booted into ROM BASIC almost instantly. From that prompt, you could write programs, or even read them from the integrated cassette port (basically a microphone jack).
• korethr 8y ago
  I envy that you had BASIC; I never did. I don't recall if all of the instances from my elementary school career didn't have BASIC installed in the ROM, or if I simply never got the change to discover the world that existed beyond the approved set of educational programs (like Oregon Trail) that the computers existed to run. I sometimes wonder if I'd have gotten into programming sooner had I had exposure more than just Oregon Trail or Number Munchers.
  • bitwize 8y ago
    BASIC could be entered with a magic keystroke or by booting without a disk. If you knew enough to try these things and get to the BASIC prompt on your own, your teacher would have considered you a genius and called you over when the damn thing didn't work.
    • ryandrake 8y ago
      Nowadays if you figured something like that out as a kid in school, you’d be expelled at best, arrested for hacking at worst.
  • phaedrus 8y ago
    Number munchers is one of my earliest memories of using a computer.