A few weeks ago this question was raised: On 2025 May 6, at 11:20 PM, Steve Lewis via cctalk <[email protected]> wrote:
> Anyway, it leads to a question of what was the first boot-to-BASIC system? The first to come to mind was the HP-9830, it was mentioned but seemingly dismissed: > And tentatively I'm thinking that might have been the Wang 2200 (but I've > no idea what the "lineage" of the Wang 2200 BASIC was). Yes, yes, there > was the HP9830 (if the BASIC ROM cartridge was inserted) - sales of both > systems seemed to have started really in ’74. To my awareness, the 9830 was the first boot-to-BASIC-from-ROM-at-power-on machine, or ‘BASIC appliance’. Available/announced late 1972. (It didn’t need a 'BASIC ROM cartridge' to be inserted - BASIC in ROM was built-in as part of the standard out-of-the-box system. Optional ROM cartridges could be plugged-in to extend the built-in BASIC.) However, there was a much-earlier system: As early as mid-1968 HP was marketing single-user HP BASIC for the HP-2116 (or 2115, 2114). (This was distinct from HP-2000 time-shared BASIC). It didn’t automatically boot, but with 3 button-pushes you could be in the full BASIC environment (“READY”) in less than 2 seconds from power-on. No (re-)loading required, nor disk or tape drives, nor separate OS or executive. This was, of course, thanks to the non-volatility of core. This replay is late because I had to get around to conforming that the above actually works, that is, you could repeatedly reboot the prior-loaded interpreter across many power cycles - it didn’t alter anything after boot that would necessitate re-loading.
