[TUHS] Bootstrapping UNIX - how was it done

[Bakul Shah via TUHS]

On Mar 17, 2026, at 6:03 AM, Adam Koszek via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> For bootstrapping, some aspects must have been easier: lights connected to registers and displayed on the dashboard. But some aspects must have been hard - after hitting some level of complexity with sizable programs, debugging things from the long log of teletype printout must have been interesting.

For our V7 port to a brand new (in 1981) 68K based board, we
had to download the kernel using XMODEM or some such protocol
that we had added to the boot ROM. Our cross-dev environment
was on a VAX 11/780 so we continued this way until the ported
system was stable enough and I had a minimal ST412 driver up
and running using programmed IO! But if the kernel crashed,
we were back to downloading via the serial connection!