Hardwired

Hardwired (pronounced hahrd-wahyuhrd)

(1) In electronics, built into the hardware.

(2) In mainframe computing, a terminal connected to the CPU(s) by a direct cable rather than through a switching network.

(3) In the behavioral sciences, a cluster of theories pertaining to or describing intrinsic and relatively un-modifiable patterns of behavior by both humans and animals.  Published work describes genetically determined, instinctive behavior, as opposed to learned behavior.

(4) In computer programming, a kludge temporarily or quickly to fix a problem, done historically by bypassing the operating system and directly addressing the hardware (assembly language).

(5) Casual term for anything designed to perform a specific task.

1969:  A compound word: hard + wired.  Hard is from the Middle English hard from the Old English heard, from the Proto-Germanic harduz, derived ultimately from the primitive Indo-European kort-ús from kret (strong, powerful).  Cognate with the German hart, the Swedish hård, the Ancient Greek κρατύς (kratús), the Sanskrit क्रतु (krátu) and the Avestan xratu.  Wire is from the Middle English wir & wyr from the Old English wīr (wire, metal thread, wire-ornament) from the Proto-Germanic wīraz (wire) from the primitive Indo-European wehiros (a twist, thread, cord, wire) from wehy (to turn, twist, weave, plait).  The suffix ed is used to form past tenses of (regular) verbs and in linguistics is used for the base form of any past form.  It’s from the Middle English ede & eden from the Old English ode & odon (a weak past ending) from the Proto-Germanic ōd & ōdēdun. Cognate with the Saterland Frisian ede (first person singular past indicative ending), the Swedish ade and the Icelandic aði.  The earliest known citation is from 1969 although there are suggestions the word or its variants had been used earlier, both in electronics and forms of mechanical production.  The word migrated to zoology, genetics and human behavioral studies in 1971.  Hardwired, hard wired and hard-wired are used interchangeably and no rules or conventions of use have ever emerged.

SysCon

In the world of the pre-modern mainframes, there might be a dozen or thousands of terminals (a monitor & keyboard) attached to a system but there was always one special terminal, SysCon (system console), hardwired to the central processor.  Unlike other terminals which connected, sometimes over long distances, through repeaters and telephone lines, SysCon, used by system administrators, plugged directly into the core CPU.  When Novell released Netware in 1983, they reprised SysCon as the name of the software layer which was the main administration tool.