Atari 2600 test program

With a little practice simple stuff (AKA stuff it's suited for) on the 2600 is quite straight forward.

I didn't expect this to take too long. Of course it did take 3 times as long as I expected. I guess after 14 years away I'm a little rusty.

source & binary attached (tested under z26 emulation)

• Atari 2600 test source: atari2600test.s
• Atari 2600 test cartridge image

The Atari 2600 is such fun to develop for until you try to go a little too far then suddenly you run out of RAM (only 128 bytes!) or ROM space (only 4K without bank-switching) or CPU cycles while drawing that scanline (only 76 cycles per scanline and when you don't have a frame buffer there is often a lot you'd like to do while displaying that scanline!).
Then it becomes both more fun, more challenging and more infuriating...

Now I've got the taste of it again it's tempting to go full on into 2600 programming again (and go off track after only 1 day).
I'll resist and try my hand with something different next time.

TRS-80? Atari 8-bit?

I doubt any of the other introductory programs will be this easily developed though. All of the other platforms are both more complex and less familiar.