I suppose in principle the RPi Pico could self-host its own OS and devel environment. 520 KB of RAM in the old days was plenty to fit an OS and compiler. No MMU so no paging though.
While the proposed use cases were things like that, I'd push back on saying that they weren't "intended to be general-purpose computers". I have the original 8080 manual in front of me, and it's very clear they considered them computers to be applied to problems (the first chapter is literally "The Functions of a Computer"). Oh, and the 8080 manual clearly identifies it as the "Intel 8080 Microcomputer Systems" and the 6800 calls it the "Benchmark Family for Microcomputer Systems"
In case anyone's wondering what makes HN so damn great
I spent pretty much all of the 1988-9 school year (I was 10) inhaling it.
Seriously, it was fantastic.
They considered them computers to be applied to a narrow set of problems. That chapter only touches on general computer processor concepts, not applications specific to that processor.
From the first page of that manual - “Applications of the 8080 span from large, intelligent systems terminals to decompression computers for deep sea divers.”
Table 0-2. Microprocessor Applications from the introduction has the following applications listed: “Intelligent Terminals, Gaming Machines, Cash Registers, Accounting and Billing Machines, Telephone Switching Control, Numerically Controlled Machines, Process Control.”
Clearly the intention was embedded or “dedicated” use. It is obvious both from the design and capabilities of the processor as well as the fact that a market for general purpose computers with microprocessors did not exist. Even the “superminicomputer” market was in its infancy in those days. Not a single one of those listed applications is a stand-alone computer system, let alone one that could tackle the whole array of problems expected of computers then. That they call it a “Microcomputer System” is irrelevant; it does not mean what you are suggesting.
With two cheap PSRAM chips and a bit of trickery, you can upgrade that to 32(.5) MB, which is certainly enough to run a small OS.
In principle you can add even more memory with bank switching, but 32 MB is the limit for a flat address space.
The first Amigas had 512k of ram. Both had much less processing power.
With 32mb you could probably run some kind of Linux.
https://github.com/hchunhui/tiny386/tree/master https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/11/14/windows-95-made-to-r...