<operating system> A short program loaded from non-volatile
storage and used to bootstrap a computer.
On early computers great efforts were expended on making the
bootstrap loader short, in order to make it easy to toggle
in via the front panel switches. It was just clever enough
to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from
punched cards or paper tape), to which it handed control.
This program in turn read the application or operating
system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus,
in successive steps, the computer "pulled itself up by its
bootstraps" to a useful operating state.
Nowadays the bootstrap loader is usually found in ROM or
EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on
the disk, called the "boot block". When this program
gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS
and hand control over to it. A diskless workstation can use
bootp to load its OS from the network.
