[pizlonator]

Sounds like you’re saying those machines executed bytecode.

Otherwise there isn’t a great limiting principle to your logic. Just because someone once built hardware that executes such a high level assembly that the manual referred to it as bytecode doesn’t mean that all bytecode formats are assembly.

[pjmlp]

Indeed I am, the interpreter is the microcoded CPU.

Even modern 80x86 Assembly is a low level form of bytecode, given that the micro-ops that are processed by the microcoded CPU are completly unrelated to 80x86 Assembly opcodes.