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Retrocomputing

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    Great answer. Machines like the Apple //, the 1981 IBM PC, and several 8-bit Atari boxes could boot right to BASIC. For the Apple and Atari, BASIC was effectively the command prompt. Booting from Apple or Atari DOS added disk access hooks to BASIC so you could load from and save to disk. Commented Mar 5, 2017 at 18:34
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    Yes, and there were also alternative DOS one could use, for example if you bought an Indus brand disk drive for your Atari, it came with disks for their version of DOS, which you could use instead of the Atari DOS. It didn't change the computer's OS or way if worked for other purposes, but the disk commands and UI were different compared to using Atari DOS (which also had a few versions). Commented Mar 5, 2017 at 21:35
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    A big reason BASIC was in ROM is the base machine had very little RAM. There simply wasn't room in RAM for a BASIC interpreter and also any useful work. Commented Mar 6, 2017 at 18:15
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    @MichaelKjörling I vaguely remember the 5150 had cassette deck I/O, so every base PC had something. Commented Mar 6, 2017 at 21:01
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    @hippietrail oh, is that where the traffic came from? :) Commented Jun 4, 2020 at 2:46