Cold boot (S01 E00-01)

What happens in the first 500 milliseconds after you press the power button? Cold Boot is a 25-article series that walks from a voltage on a wire to your first shell prompt — one layer at a time, no magic, no hand-waving. Articles 00 and 01 cover the physical foundation: why we chose to interpret voltage ranges as bits at all, and what a motherboard actually does between the moment you press the button and the moment the processor fetches its first instruction. Companion articles: https://t34ch.tech/coldboot