website/content/museum/rca-cosmac-vip.md

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RCA Cosmac VIP	Computers	name image company company_name tabs forum_thread photos adverts hardware screenshots emulators links docs related oc_id source Cosmac VIP /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_1.jpg /companies/rca RCA photos adverts hardware software emulators links docs 537 title subtitle text image COSMAC VIP Picture courtesy of www.worthpoint.com /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_front_1.jpg title subtitle text image COSMAC VIP /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac_vip_top.jpg title subtitle text image COMPLETE SYSTEM Picture courtesy of www.worthpoint.com /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_complete_1.jpg title subtitle text image MOTHER BOARD This is quite a simple electronic layout. /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_mobo_1.jpg title subtitle text image MOTHER BOARD - TOP VIEW /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac_vip_mobo_top.jpg title subtitle text image MOTHERBOARD Picture courtesy of www.worthpoint.com /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_mobo_1%5B1%5D.jpg title subtitle text image IN USE Someone courageous enough to test the Cosmac VIP... /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_in-use_1.jpg title subtitle text image FAMILY "Cosmac VIP. The computer for the whole family." They indeed seem to have a lot of fun ! /media/museum/photos/rca_cosmac-vip_family_1.jpg title subtitle text image 1980 ADVERT & PRICE LIST **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** /media/museum/pubs/rca_cosmac_pub_1.jpg title subtitle text image ASCII KEYBOARD 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. /media/museum/hardware/rca_cosmac-vip_ascii-keyboard_1.jpg title subtitle text image UFO /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_ufo_ss.gif title subtitle text image BLITZ /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_blitz_ss.gif title subtitle text image INVADERS /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_invaders_ss.gif title subtitle text image PONG /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_pong_ss.gif title subtitle text image BLINKY Pac-man clone /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_blinky_ss.gif title subtitle text image BREAKOUT /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_breakout_ss.gif title subtitle text image KALEIDOSCOPE Hmmm...this program is quite similar to the one built-in the RCA Studio II game system... /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_kaleidoscope_ss.gif title subtitle text image TANK /media/museum/software/rca_cosmac-vip_tank_ss.gif title url platform text CHIP-8 emulator http://myweb.worldnet.net/~winter/chip8/chip8.htm MS DOS MS-DOS emulator bundled with games title url platform text TinyELF for MacOS http://www.tinyelf.com/ Apple Emulation of 1802-based computer now on Mac OS X title url platform text RCS Elf Emulator http://www.elf-emulation.com/emulator.html Unix / Linux Elf, Elf II, Super ELF and Studio II emulator (Windows compilation also available) title url platform text TinyELF for PalmOS http://www.cosmacelf.com/tinyelf.htm Other platform Emulates an Elf computer on PalmOS systems. The Elf is quite similar to the Cosmac VIP. title url text Bill's Home Page http://incolor.inebraska.com/bill_r/rca_cosmac_vip_brochure.htm Bill has scanned a nice brochure of the Cosmac VIP dated 1977. title url text The RCA COSMAC Yahoo! Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rcacosmac/ Yahoo! community devoted to preserving information on the VIP title url text www.cosmacelf.com http://www.cosmacelf.com/ excellent site about 1802 based systems title url text www.elf-emulation.com http://www.elf-emulation.com Informative website dedicated to the Elf systems emulation title url cover text RCA COSMAC VIP - INSTRUCTION MANUAL FOR VP-111 null /media/museum/docs/couvs/rca_cosmac-vip_user-manual.jpg **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 /museum/rca-superelf 543 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230601001718/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=543 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 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.