[lebuffon]

Forth is very handy for this kind of new iron startup work.

You can interrogate the hardware interactively for those really thorny problems and confirm your hypotheses immediately. You can write short test scripts and send them via the terminal and/or write and send short Assembler routines and test those interactively. Each routine you define is interactively usable to assist with higher level testing and/or can be further compiled together to make higher level or looping tests.

It's old and it's weird but it's still a good tool for this kind of work. It may mean you only have to enter the top domain of Hell. :-)

https://mecrisp-stellaris-folkdoc.sourceforge.io/flashing-me...

*I have no connection to mecrisp Forth but know it to have a good reputation. It is a a native code compiler with an integrated text interpreter.

[jpieper]

Yeah, I have (maybe slightly fond?) memories of using Forth to develop a tape drive reader and writer for an undergraduate lab project. It is wonderful for some things, although in this case, where the problem was literally which addresses the instructions got assigned to, it is unclear if it would have made anything better.