| The COSMAC VIP (1977) was an early microcomputer that was aimed at video games. For a price of US$275, it could be purchased from RCA by mail order. It came in kit form, and had to be assembled. Its dimensions were 8.5 by 11 inches, and it had a RCA 1802 processor; along with a crystal clock operating at 1.76MHz (3.521280MHz divided by 2). It had 2 KB (2,048 bytes) of RAM, which could be expanded to 4K on-board, and 32 KB via an expansion slot. Its 5V DC CDP18S023 power supply had an output of 600 mA. I/O ports could be added to connect to sensors, interface relays, an ASCII keyboard, or a printer. The machine connected to a TV for video output (using a CDP1861/CDP1864 video display chip), and sound could be played using its integrated speaker. It had a 100 bytes per second cassette tape interface as well. Programs could be loaded into RAM from tapes, and vice versa. It also had a hex keyboard for input, which had 16 keys spanning the hex digits 0 to F. LED indicators were used to display power status and tape input; a third LED along with an on-board beeper were activated by the CPU's 1-bit "Q" register. A run/reset switch was used to start user programs or the operating system, respectively. A simple 4-kilobit (512-byte) operating system was built into its ROM. It allowed one to type in programs using its hex keyboard, show memory contents on its display (step through the bytes of RAM), and view the values of the processor registers. The ROM monitor was accessed by holding the "C" key while switching from Reset to Run. Source: Wikipedia |
Downloads: Cosmac VIP Manual (PDF) |
Cosmac VIP
