ataridave Posted July 15, 2019 Share Posted July 15, 2019 I know that PDP-11s were used in the late 1970s, but by the late 1980s, I'm really curious as to what computers Atari 2600 game programmers were using? PCs, Macs, or something else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted July 15, 2019 Share Posted July 15, 2019 That's an incredibly varied question. I have answered this before on this board, do some searching. But basically, any computer, with a 6502 assembler, a text editor, and at the very least, an EPROM programmer, with an appropriately wired cartridge could have been used as a development system. Nice to haves: * A romulator (RAM on a cartridge, with ability to latch data into it via parallel or serial port, or via writing into shared memory area on computer bus) * a logic analyzer (to catch hard to find bugs, especially if the analyzer has a decent trace history, a la HP 1611) * an Atari 800 for graphics editing (otherwise, it's graph paper) etc. This is a hard question to nail down, because this was a period of time in which the VCS's third party market was literally pried open by Activision winning a pivotal court case against Atari. There were no development tools given by the first party vendor, so you literally had to fashion your own. Thankfully the VCS is a simple enough system that with a bit of brain grease, you can cobble SOMETHING together with what you may have lying around... today, things are so much simpler: * Stella has the best VCS debugger on planet earth. * web platforms like 8bitworkshop.com give you a real time assembly and display, so you can literally mold display kernels in real time. * fast cross-assembly times (fractions of a second) * bigger and badder co-processors and bus stuffing techniques to increase display fidelity * more memory available via bank-switching etc. -Thom 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted July 15, 2019 Share Posted July 15, 2019 I'm going to guess an IBM PC. Compatibles were relatively inexpensive by the late 1980s. Their expansion slots let you interface directly with a ram cartridge. And you can use it for word processing and spreadsheets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted July 16, 2019 Share Posted July 16, 2019 On 7/14/2019 at 10:48 PM, mr_me said: I'm going to guess an IBM PC. Compatibles were relatively inexpensive by the late 1980s. Their expansion slots let you interface directly with a ram cartridge. And you can use it for word processing and spreadsheets. Some did use an IBM PC with a homemade romulator. Doug Neubauer, for example did this when programming Solaris. Another common setup was an Apple II with a romulator, a commercial romulator/prom setup was the Frob, which consisted of a language card replacement that provided shared RAM that could be written into directly. So you could e.g. assemble in Merlin directly to RAM, and then turn on the VCS to test. The Frob had a lot of other little bits to it too, like a EPROM programmer, for making prototype carts. -Thom 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMaddog Posted July 16, 2019 Share Posted July 16, 2019 In the late 80's Atari Corp. used ST computers for their SDKs, it's a cable that plugs in the cart slots of both the ST and the 2600/7800 and a cross assembler. In fact the Tramiels used the STs for alot of things in their company including replacements for VAX terminals. It probably explains why people who made 7800 games also made 2600 versions... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+frankodragon Posted July 16, 2019 Share Posted July 16, 2019 Hard to tell by the quality of this video but one of them could be an Atari computer for graphics. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ataridave Posted July 16, 2019 Author Share Posted July 16, 2019 OK, thanks for the replies! Sorry I didn't search before asking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ataridave Posted July 16, 2019 Author Share Posted July 16, 2019 (edited) 6 hours ago, frankodragon said: Hard to tell by the quality of this video but one of them could be an Atari computer for graphics. I'll look, but even if I don't find anything, thank you so much for posting this video! I LOVE learning about the history of the gaming industry! I think this video was made in 1982. Good grief, I was 5 years old! My older brother and I got a 2600 for Christmas that year. Edited July 16, 2019 by ataridave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted July 17, 2019 Share Posted July 17, 2019 21 hours ago, MrMaddog said: In the late 80's Atari Corp. used ST computers for their SDKs, it's a cable that plugs in the cart slots of both the ST and the 2600/7800 and a cross assembler. In fact the Tramiels used the STs for alot of things in their company including replacements for VAX terminals. It probably explains why people who made 7800 games also made 2600 versions... Was the ST being used as a VAX terminal or were they replacing the VAX with personal computers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted July 17, 2019 Share Posted July 17, 2019 Here's pictures/etc on the Frob: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-frob-26_29983.html -Thom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMaddog Posted July 20, 2019 Share Posted July 20, 2019 (edited) On 7/17/2019 at 10:35 AM, mr_me said: Was the ST being used as a VAX terminal or were they replacing the VAX with personal computers? The terminal, they used a plug in VT100 cart... Edited July 20, 2019 by MrMaddog 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
82-T/A Posted August 3, 2019 Share Posted August 3, 2019 On 7/16/2019 at 10:56 AM, tschak909 said: Doug Neubauer, for example did this when programming Solaris. ...such a great game. Totally blew me away when I was younger. If I'm not mistaken, the planet graphics were re-used in another game too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nebulon Posted August 9, 2019 Share Posted August 9, 2019 Might be some info here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rU9BjLOE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSt1ASRm0f8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuw3YaO3wuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc5--6wUwWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whhQ71_SrU8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTDUB_GiTKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiHvVAtnf0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27mm0x6uYhU Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctor_x Posted October 21, 2019 Share Posted October 21, 2019 On 7/16/2019 at 12:16 PM, MrMaddog said: In the late 80's Atari Corp. used ST computers for their SDKs, it's a cable that plugs in the cart slots of both the ST and the 2600/7800 and a cross assembler. In fact the Tramiels used the STs for alot of things in their company including replacements for VAX terminals. It probably explains why people who made 7800 games also made 2600 versions... did not know this.. you would have thought that Ataris would have been used to develop for Ataris but seems like that wasnt the case much.. Nice to find out about ST's being part of the dev mix. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMaddog Posted October 24, 2019 Share Posted October 24, 2019 On 10/21/2019 at 6:32 PM, doctor_x said: did not know this.. you would have thought that Ataris would have been used to develop for Ataris but seems like that wasnt the case much.. Nice to find out about ST's being part of the dev mix. You mean Atari 8-bits? I remember seeing a segment on PM Magazine where Games By Apollo used an Atari 800 to make their games. Not hard to use a 6502 Assembler on any 8-bit micro and shoot the object code to the 2600. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKRBMs9NZ1Y 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leeroy ST Posted October 27, 2019 Share Posted October 27, 2019 I used to read how some late ColecoVision/2600 cross-platform games were made on the Adam, I hope that article isn't liked behind a paywall and is still available. Of course a modified internal Adam with more ram. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluejay Posted November 13, 2019 Share Posted November 13, 2019 It sure would be fun to program a 2600 game on an IBM PC! I'm not sure, but my money is on the Atari 8 bits computers. I guess it's the most similar thing to the 2600 that is powerful enough to code a 2600 game on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted November 13, 2019 Share Posted November 13, 2019 (edited) You can use any computer with an appropriate 6502 assembler. VCS games are headerless, so you just need to output an appropriate binary, typically ORG'ed at $F000, with the last 6 bytes filled in appropriately so the 6502 can RESET. The interrupt and nmi lines are not connected, so they can simply be ignored, however IRQ can be abused to point to a routine that needs to execute as quickly as possible (triggered by a BRK instruction). -Thom Edited November 13, 2019 by tschak909 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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