How was 2600 development done back in the day?

[Sdw]

Nowadays we are spoiled with fast crossassemblers where we can edit our code on highres screens on PCs.

Then we fire up Stella and get all the debug info we need, and then just put the .bin file on a SD-card and put it in our Harmony cart to testrun on real hardware.

 

But how did things look back in the 70ies/80ies?

 

Anyone know what host systems were used for assembling the binaries?

How was the result then code tested? I know there are prototype carts, so I'm assuming EPROM burns were done, but was that the only option or were there any special "dev"-versions of the console where you could load code via a serial cable to RAM instead or something?

[horseboy]

After they got an idea they laid out binary code on a large table using Cheerios and Pretzel sticks. Once the coding was complete everything was transferred over to a series of punch cards that were hand fed into Atari's mainframe computer. From there the code was chiseled into stone tablets and shipped to Korea where the final cartridge was produced.

[+GroovyBee]

Search is your friend :-

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/156826-games-and-games-development/page__view__findpost__p__1924466

[Sdw]

Search is your friend :-

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/156826-games-and-games-development/page__view__findpost__p__1924466

 

Thanks GroovyBee, some real interesting stuff in that thread!

[kirin jensen]

After they got an idea they laid out binary code on a large table using Cheerios and Pretzel sticks. Once the coding was complete everything was transferred over to a series of punch cards that were hand fed into Atari's mainframe computer. From there the code was chiseled into stone tablets and shipped to Korea where the final cartridge was produced.

Ther has got to be a way to sneak that into a Wikipedia 2600 entry.