Something I liked about home computers was the fact that you turned it on and, if there was just no media attached to it, you were instantly dropped into a BASIC console. If you had no software, no OS, no cartridge, no tape, no floppy, no disk... the machine was still useful. I missed that when I started using a PC.

Later I got to know that the original PC, IBM 5150, had such feature and the skill was simply removed as the "standard" evolved.

I think motherboard vendors should have kept this option on the BIOS. Being able to turn on the computer and have the instant possibility of writing and running code when every other software brakes is very powerful. Recovering a DOS based system was relatively easy if you had other computer available: simply put a floppy and type "sys a:" and you had a new boot disk, but you still needed other computer to do a recovery. Getting your computer to a usable or useful state without the help of another machine is something that we shouldn't have lost.