More from the article...

... Late in the summer of 1974, CP/M first started running on hardware. It became one of the first cross-platform microcomputer OSes, and revolutionized the hardware and software industries.
You can now legally run the raw unbridled power of CP/M 2.2 anywhere you like

The ancient Control Program for Microcomputers, or CP/M for short, has been enjoying a modest renaissance in recent years. By 21st century standards, it's unimaginably tiny and simple. The whole OS fits into under 200 kB, and the resident bit of the kernel is only about 3 kB. Today, in the era of end-user OSes in the tens-of-gigabytes size range, this exerts a fascination to a certain kind of hobbyist. Back when it was new, though, this wasn't minimalist " it was all that early hardware could support.

The late great Dr Gary Kildall developed CP/M in his spare time from teaching at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. On the side, he was moonlighting for a small five-year-old tech startup called Intel, which was working on its second microprocessor, the eight-bit 8008. First, Kildall wrote a small programming language for the 8008, which he called PL/M (Programming Language for Microprocessors) in playful reference to IBM's PL/I. Lacking working 8008 hardware yet, he prototyped this on a DEC PDP-10. ...

#@1 ... By 21st century standards, it's unimaginably tiny and simple. The whole OS fits into under 200 kB, and the resident bit of the kernel is only about 3 kB. ...

Yeah, that's about right.

My first home computer ran CP/M and it had an Intel 8080 CPU running at 2MHz, 64KB of memory and no permanent storage.

@#3 ... I remember the "no hard drive/only 5" floppies" days. ...

5 1/4 inch floppies?

Youngster.

:)

Back in the 70's it was 8 inch floppies.

But both had "notches" that could be covered to provide "read-only" access.

As i said previously, I had no permanent storage, hard disk or floppy.

To boot the micro I had to key in a 100-step program that read an Intel-hex-format paper tape. That paper tape contained the CP/M OS.

Yeah, every time I wanted to use the micro, and I had shut it down from the prior time I used it, that was my boot sequence. After a few months, I got better at it, and it only took me 15 minutes or so to start up the micro.

@#6 ... I had a Commodore 64 ...

In some respects, I'd say that that Commodore had a very significant, I'll say - fertilization, of the home computer industry.

The micro that I had required a lot of tech to coax it into existence.

I mean, entering a 100-step program to load the paper tape for CP/M.

That Commodore, you turned it on, and it just worked.

Yup.

Kudos to Commodore.

@#6 ... I saw a fireball outside the window. Lightning hit a tree in the front yard ...

A video I remember...

Imagining looking out your window and seeing this...

@#8

Forgot to add, the video is a minute long.

@#11 ... It turned into fire like you might see in a huge bomb explosion outside when that lightning hit.

Yeah, ya don't f!!k with lightning.

If you try, you are likely to lose, big time.