--- title: RCA Cosmac VIP categories: - Computers params: name: Cosmac VIP image: /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_1.jpg company: /companies/rca company_name: RCA tabs: - photos - adverts - hardware - software - emulators - links - docs forum_thread: 537 photos: - title: COSMAC VIP subtitle: '' text: Picture courtesy of www.worthpoint.com image: /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_front_1.jpg - title: COSMAC VIP subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac_vip_top.jpg - title: COMPLETE SYSTEM subtitle: '' text: Picture courtesy of www.worthpoint.com image: /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_complete_1.jpg - title: MOTHER BOARD subtitle: '' text: This is quite a simple electronic layout. image: /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_mobo_1.jpg - title: MOTHER BOARD - TOP VIEW subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac_vip_mobo_top.jpg - title: MOTHERBOARD subtitle: '' text: Picture courtesy of www.worthpoint.com image: /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_mobo_1%5B1%5D.jpg - title: IN USE subtitle: '' text: Someone courageous enough to test the Cosmac VIP... image: /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_in-use_1.jpg - title: FAMILY subtitle: '' text: |- "Cosmac VIP. The computer for the whole family." They indeed seem to have a lot of fun ! image: /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_family_1.jpg adverts: - title: 1980 ADVERT & PRICE LIST subtitle: '' text: |- **Price list** **VP-111** Low cost microcomputer **$99**\ **VP-114** Expansion kit for VP-111 (3 KB RAM, I/O port and connectors) **$76**\ **VP-711** Original VIP microcomputer **$199**\ **VP-44** On board RAM expansion (4 x 2114 RAM chips) **$36**\ **VP-590** Color board **$69**\ **VP-595** Simple sound board (256 programmable frequencies) with speaker **$30**\ **VP-550** Super sound board (Synthetiser with two sound channels **$49**\ **VP-551** Super sound 4 channels expansion **$74**\ **VP-570** 4 KB RAM memory expansion board **$95**\ **VP-580** Two players keypad **$20**\ **VP-585** Keypad interface board **$15**\ **VP-560** Eprom board for two 2716 EPROMS **$34**\ **VP-565** 2716 EPROM programmer with software **$99**\ **VP-575** Expansion board with 5 expansions sockets **$59**\ **VP-700** 4 KB Tiny Basic **$39**\ **VP-701** Floating point Basic (cassette) **$49**\ **VP-710** Game listings **$10**\ **VP-720** Game listings II **$15**\ **VP-601** Keyboard 128-character ASCII **$69** image: /media/museum/pubs/rca_cosmac_pub_1.jpg hardware: - title: ASCII KEYBOARD subtitle: '' text: This is not the "official" ASCII keyboard sold by RCA, but rather a keyboard intended for the Netronics Elf II computer, which was very similar to the Cosmac VIP. image: /media/museum/hardware/rca_cosmac-vip_ascii-keyboard_1.jpg screenshots: - title: UFO subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_ufo_ss.gif - title: BLITZ subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_blitz_ss.gif - title: INVADERS subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_invaders_ss.gif - title: PONG subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_pong_ss.gif - title: BLINKY subtitle: Pac-man clone text: '' image: /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_blinky_ss.gif - title: BREAKOUT subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_breakout_ss.gif - title: KALEIDOSCOPE subtitle: '' text: Hmmm...this program is quite similar to the one built-in the RCA Studio II game system... image: /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_kaleidoscope_ss.gif - title: TANK subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_tank_ss.gif emulators: - title: CHIP-8 emulator url: http://myweb.worldnet.net/~winter/chip8/chip8.htm platform: MS DOS text: MS-DOS emulator bundled with games - title: TinyELF for MacOS url: http://www.tinyelf.com/ platform: Apple text: Emulation of 1802-based computer now on Mac OS X - title: RCS Elf Emulator url: http://www.elf-emulation.com/emulator.html platform: Unix / Linux text: Elf, Elf II, Super ELF and Studio II emulator (Windows compilation also available) - title: TinyELF for PalmOS url: http://www.cosmacelf.com/tinyelf.htm platform: Other platform text: Emulates an Elf computer on PalmOS systems. The Elf is quite similar to the Cosmac VIP. links: - title: Bill's Home Page url: http://incolor.inebraska.com/bill_r/rca_cosmac_vip_brochure.htm text: Bill has scanned a nice brochure of the Cosmac VIP dated 1977. - title: The RCA COSMAC Yahoo! Group url: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rcacosmac/ text: Yahoo! community devoted to preserving information on the VIP - title: www.cosmacelf.com url: http://www.cosmacelf.com/ text: excellent site about 1802 based systems - title: www.elf-emulation.com url: http://www.elf-emulation.com text: Informative website dedicated to the Elf systems emulation docs: - title: RCA COSMAC VIP - INSTRUCTION MANUAL FOR VP-111 url: null cover: /media/museum/docs/couvs/rca_cosmac-vip_user-manual.jpg text: |- **RCA COSMAC VIP - INSTRUCTION MANUAL FOR VP-111**\ written by RCA  compiled/archived by Rob Donald\  type of document : PDF\  size : 4,9 MB\  source : www.old-computers.com related: - /museum/rca-superelf oc_id: 543 source: url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230601001718/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=543 date: '2023-06-01' --- The Cosmac VIP, originaly named VP-111, is a typical hobbyist "single-board" computer sold as a kit. You had to build it yourself ! The system uses a RCA CDP-1802 microprocessor like the [RCA Studio II](/museum/rca-studio-ii/) video game system. In fact the Studio II is very similar to the VIP and can be considered as its video-game version. But the VIP is also somehow an improved version of the original Cosmac Elf board system, described in Popular Electronics magazine, august 76 and the following months. The CDP-1802 CPU was also used as the heart of the Voyager, Viking and Galileo probes ! Until recently the 1802 was quite popular (for alarm systems for example) thanks to its CMOS technology ideal for low power systems. The Cosmac VIP has a most basic hexadecimal keyboard (16 keys). The language stored in ROM is called CHIP-8 and is only 512 bytes long ! It consists of 31 instructions each of which is two bytes (or four hex digits) long. It's a kind of simplified machine language. 16 one-byte variables are provided. Subroutine nesting and machine language inserts are permitted. CHIP-8 was quite popular at that time (Telmac 1800, ETI 660 and DREAM 6800 used it) as it allowed to program video games easily. CHIP-8 was not only used in the late 70's and early 80's. It was used in the early 90's on the HP48 calculator because there was no programming tools to develop fast games on it. Then, a better version of CHIP-8 appeared: SUPER-CHIP. This interpreter has all the CHIP-8 features, as well as and some new ones like a 128\*64 resolution (source : David Winter).\ RCA also sold Tiny Basic, a simple Basic interpreter, as a 4K ROM on an expansion board. With this system, basic functions are : type programs into RAM from the hex keyboard, save and load programs on tapes, display memory bytes in hex on CRT, step through RAM contents and examine microprocessor registers. Wow. The Cosmac VIP is equiped with a sound chip and a real-time crystal clock. The sound produced can be heard through the tape output connector. It was delivered with some documentations (CHIP-8, machine language) and listings of 20 video games ! To the left of the hexadecimal keyboard are a reset switch and LED indicators for power-on and cassette operation. Memory add-ons, expansion port and parallel interface are pre-wired on the motherboard but have to be implemented as options. With the I/O interface, you could connect interface relays, sensors, printers or ASCII keyboards.