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I was wondering how this was done?

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There's a very simple solution. ROM was invented first.

From wikipedia: "The simplest type of solid state ROM is as old as semiconductor technology itself."

Computers as early as the ENIAC used ROM to store functionality. The concept of BIOS - more simply, a bootloader - wasn't necessary until computers became publicly available, by which point ROM had been around for decades.

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Eproms existed before magnetic media as far as I know, and eproms were what BIOS was stored in. And still are in more sophisticated form.

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    magnetic media does not perform the BIOS routine, as BIOS deals with lower level functions than device drivers. Device drivers for magnetic media for example wouldnt know how to access sectors on the hardware without the BIOS.
    – deleted_user
    Commented Sep 18, 2012 at 3:12
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    a good way to look at it is, the BIOS provides translation, configuration, and access services to device drivers.
    – deleted_user
    Commented Sep 18, 2012 at 3:15
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In the earliest computers, there was a front panel with toggle switches to enter machine code to get it up and running so it could talk to the magnetic tape or punch cards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_panel

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