I Thought I'd repost some of losethos's comment, seeing as he is hell-banned, but the comment was quite relevant.
losethos:
Smart American kids my age had C64s and Apple IIs. We all entered 6502 machine code into DATA statements in BASIC programs. Everyone did it. It seems so fantastical and primitive to a monkey, doesn't it.
Generally, we used monitor program to disassemble and assemblers, though you had to buy an assembler. Every store had magazines with BASIC programs full of DATA statements with graphic and machine code data. People typed it in. We had xsum bytes on blocks.
losethos: Smart American kids my age had C64s and Apple IIs. We all entered 6502 machine code into DATA statements in BASIC programs. Everyone did it. It seems so fantastical and primitive to a monkey, doesn't it. Generally, we used monitor program to disassemble and assemblers, though you had to buy an assembler. Every store had magazines with BASIC programs full of DATA statements with graphic and machine code data. People typed it in. We had xsum bytes on blocks.