...and I think I have cheated badly by having used a rom programmer and a text editor to write the microcode.
If you feel that bad, get rid of the text editor and rom. Get graph paper and cheap optical reflective IR reflective sensors, 1 per dip-switch on your bread board for programming. Draw out your program with a black marker, with one of the IR sensors shifted down 50% to catch the graph lines as you load clock. Just slide the paper under the string of 12-15 sensors to load your program or OS.
No more rom... No more text editor... (I see it's probably too late anyways...)
Though, I do not have a good method of saving programs to paper unless you add a parallel port & printer, on spool paper, and you create a simple printer save routine, + at least a way of expanding everything to a simple OS with peripherals.