website/content/museum/rca-fred.md at 2026446ce1331619d8e9402dbc05778324a89044

Files

T

yann64andClaude Opus 5.5 3eeabe9649 Full content from the completed page crawl (media download still running)

6,654 pages: 1,289 machines, 702 software, 460 companies, 64 history, 17 articles, 59 fun.
4,336 media files so far; references to files not downloaded yet are left out.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YDRjtmAiNpo5mK5N3d7QwZ

2026-10-12 07:55:22 +02:00

2.9 KiB

Raw Blame History

title, categories, params

title

categories

params

RCA Fred

Computers

name

image

company

company_name

tabs

photos

software

oc_id

source

Fred

/media/museum/photos/rca_fred2-computer_1_450px.jpg

/companies/rca

RCA

photos

software

title	subtitle	text	image
FRED "FUN1" PROTOTYPE		Picture courtesy of David Sarnoff library (digital.hagley.org)	null

title	subtitle	text	image
FRED "FUN1" PROTOTYPE		Picture courtesy of Joyce Weisbecker	null

title	subtitle	text	image
FRED PROTOTYPE - CIRCA 1972		The daughters of Joseph Weisbecker are posing for the picture. Joyse Weisbecker (right) will be the first woman to program games (for FRED and Studio II systems) and be paid for it. She was also the first independent game programmer of all time ! Picture courtesy of David Sarnoff library (digital.hagley.org)	null

title	subtitle	text	image
RCA FRED 2 PROTOTYPE		The Sarnoff Collection, The College of New Jersey	/media/museum/photos/rca_fred2-computer_1_800px.jpg

title	subtitle	text	image
RCA FRED 2 PROTOTYPE - REAR		Thanks to Herb Johnson (http://www.retrotechnology.com/memship/cosmac_fred2.html) for this picture	/media/museum/photos/rca_fred2-computer_rear_1.jpg

/software/bowling-851

/software/deduce-also-known-as-deduce-sa

/software/tic-tac-toe

1308

url	date
https://web.archive.org/web/20230601001754/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1308	2023-06-01

This Fred computer is a prototype designed by Joseph Weisbecker, engineer at RCA. He already imagined several early computer designs before this Fred model, such as the System 00 or the original Fred concept.

Fred (Flexible Recreational & Educational Device) is in fact a concept imagined by Joseph Weisbecker for an educational computer able to play games. This concept emerged in several hardware versions through time. The first models could be dated as early as 1970 or 1971 !

The first models (like the one code-named System 00) used only small-scale digital TTL logic chips, the Fred computer picture here is the first system of the project to use integrated chipsets, particularly the RCA's COSMAC 1801 chip set, which would later become the single-chip COSMAC 1802.

All the incredible work initiated by Joseph Weisbecker eventually led to the RCA Cosmac line of computers (like The Microtutor or the Cosmac VIP) and the RCA Studio II gaming system, among other projects.

Photo of the Fred computer courtesy of the Sarnoff Collection, The College of New Jersey

We need more info about this console ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system, please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.

2.9 KiB Raw Blame History

2.9 KiB

Raw Blame History