I worked for Atari and then one of its successor companies (Atari Games) for 13 years, designing hardware for coin-operated video games.
When I arrived in 1979, software for the games was cross-assembled on two DEC PDP-11/20 systems in batch mode. We had two computer operators who would take your marked-up listing, do the edits, and run the program. If it actually ran without any fatal errors, it would produce a listing and a paper tape.
Paper tape? (Well, at least it wasn't punched cards.)
On a good day the process would take less than an hour. On a bad day, when someone else's project had been designated as "hot" because it was about to go out on Field Test or be Released, you might get only two runs that day.
You then took the Paper Tape to your emulator which had a Paper Tape reader.
The emulators were home-made and were in a plywood cabinet painted black which is why they were called "Black Boxes." Programmers could load the program from paper tape, run it, set breakpoints, and examine memory as well as write to it. It was all done in Hex code, so people became adept at hand assembling small fragments of code. There was no way of saving the hand-patched program, so power interruptions were usually followed by much wailing, yelling, and gnashing of teeth. (To be fair, the few commercially available emulators weren't any better.)
Because the Black Box did not contain a built-in logic analyzer we had a few HP Logic Analyzers on carts that people dragged around from project to project.
It was common for a Programmer returning from lunch discovering that his analyzer had been hijacked. (The Programmers were all guys then.) The result was more wailing, yelling, and gnashing of teeth, "Who took my HP?"
Click through to the article to read the rest plus the email logs. If you ever wondered what is was like to work for one of the earliest successful console companies, here's your chance.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday November 26 2015, @08:45AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by martyb on Thursday November 26 2015, @01:14PM
Though not specifically about computer games, per se, I would highly recommend reading "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" [wikipedia.org] by Steven Levy.
The earliest parts predate my personal experience, but later parts matched up well with what I experienced in the industry. I found it to be very readable and gave some great background on how systems developed and became what they are today.
For a close look at a particular computer's development process "back in the day", I'd suggest as a follow-on: "The Soul of a New Machine" [wikipedia.org] written by Tracy Kidder:
At that time, I was working at DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) and we were fierce competitors. The descriptions in that book matched up well with what I experienced at the time and was a great "remember when" for me: minicomputers, dumb TTYs, modems, and the like.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2015, @02:11PM
Ken Olsen: It's "Digital", god damn it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2015, @03:41PM
The descriptions in that book matched up well with what I experienced at the time and was a great "remember when" for me: minicomputers, dumb TTYs, modems, and the like.
The other thing was, those were the days when companies would design and deliver most of the hardware and software that they sold: CPUs, support chips, motherboards, operating systems, compilers, even major applications like CAD-CAM. It was based on the Henry Ford model.
Those were the days, my friend.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Thursday November 26 2015, @04:12PM
Came here to post similar sentiment: I have little to contribute, but I enjoyed reading it (and would love more stories like this).
So please don't take a low comment count on this article as a lack of interest.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2015, @09:10AM
Yeah sure OK. Lemme see your email logs containing all the sexy emails that you sent to your mistress. Your private emails will be historically significant as soon as your wife divorces you.
Expectation of email privacy? What The Fuck is privacy??? Soystain Nerds don't care about Privacy!!
You. Fucking. Hypocrites.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2015, @12:35PM
Cool story, brah.
(Score: 3, Funny) by shortscreen on Thursday November 26 2015, @07:45PM
How did Phoenix666 have time to work at Atari while also doing his stints as biologist, archaeologist, power engineer, and php programmer?
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Thursday November 26 2015, @08:10PM
(look at how slick webpages were back then!)
For anyone who wants to read more about the good old days of computing, I recommend this: http://www.easy68k.com/paulrsm/dg/ [easy68k.com] These are newsletters from a man who ran his own business selling his 68000 CPU board and his own compiler (and later some CAD workstations)
Also, volume two of "The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers" is out https://www.createspace.com/5806890 [createspace.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2015, @08:22PM
Jed Margolin was well established at Atari Coin-Op (arcade games) as an ace hardware designer by the time I started consulting for them in the mid-1980s. At that time he was part of the Applied Research group which developed their own hardware for Hard Drivin' and then Race Drivin'. Not only did Jed design the boards (which had 5 and 6 processors respectively, communicating in shared memory), he also wrote the test code...and his stuff all worked. Once we overclocked one of his development boards and it kept working until nearly 50% faster than design speed.
Over his office door was a large sign, "Thane of Hardware".
Elsewhere on his site are some more Hard Drivin' stories and also schematics for anyone that needs to service their game. Mine still works, as does one that a friend bought very used--the two are linked for one-on-one racing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 27 2015, @08:17PM
Are the two Hard Drivin cabinets that are lined for one-on-one racing linked locally, or do you have it running over a remote connection?
I have wanted to get a pair of Jaguars working via Catboxes or other RS232 ports to a hayes-to-tcpip emulator and then dial the IP addressing as needed (such as I have done for my c64), but... there are few people out there with the hardware I have to play against and actually hope it'll work.
A reason to be upset is that the Jaguar apparently skimped on the serial UART and so connectivity is spotty when using a modem (dialup). I haven't tried it over a purely digital connection, but if voip is bad a 9600 bps I imagine this will also be latency sensitive as well.
Not too many games to try 1:1 like that on the Jaguar, but it'd be cool to get battlesphere or something over the internet.
It probably would be easier to run in emulation than to get working in hardware...