Typically, you might use the switches to toggle in a first-level bootloader that would then load a better bootloader from some kind of storage like ... was punch cards. Technically, Hollerith ...

(1) See loyalty punch card. (2) An early storage medium made of thin cardboard stock that held data as patterns of punched holes. Also called "punched" cards, each of the 80 or 96 columns held one ...

Considering you just can’t go down to Fry’s and buy an IBM 80-column punch card reader, we’re loving [digitatrails]’ clever way of getting data off an otherwise unreadable storage medium.

From punch card-operated looms in the 1800s to modern cellphones, if an object has an "on" and an "off" state, it can be used to store information. In a computer laptop, the binary ones and zeroes ...