The term comes from the idea of "lifting oneself by the bootstraps." So,
if you grab the straps on your boots and lift, you should get off the
ground, right?  Anyway, that's the idea. You'll see the term in FET
driver circuits a fair amount where a portion of the drive for the gate
is provided by the output.
        This is, of course, also where the term "boot your computer" came from.
On the PDP8 I used to work on, we'd key a loader program in on the toggle
switches. That loader then read a more comprehensive loader from punched
tape. That program then read in the application. This "loading the
loader" is similar to lifting yourself by your bootstraps. You're running
a loader that's loading a loader.
        The same thing, of course, happens in a PC. The BIOS only knows how to
load the boot track. It does this, which then loads other stuff. Again,
we're loading the loader, or bringing up the computer by its
bootstraps...

Harold


FCC Rules Online at http://hallikainen.com/FccRules
Lighting control for theatre and television at http://www.dovesystems.com

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