Built a workstation around the AT&T CRISP chip — the processor that became the Hobbit. The machine had no disk. Unix lived in ROM. Power on, you're in the kernel. No boot loader, no BIOS handoff, no disk seek. Just voltage and then a shell prompt.
The compiler had a bug. I emailed Kernighan. He called me. That's how things worked — the person who wrote it is the person who fixes it. No ticket system.
I didn't switch to assembly either. The compiler should produce correct code. That's its job.
The journey
From a conversation about the CRISP workstation, the Hobbit chip, and the Gnot. The machine was diskless — Unix burned into ROM. Probably the first time anyone did that. The compiler bug led to a phone call from Kernighan. Bell Labs culture: direct line between the person with the problem and the person with the fix.