COSMAC VIP

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. It's dimensions were 8.5 by 11 inches, and it had a RCA 1802 processor; along with a crystal clock. It had 2 KB (2,048 bytes) of RAM, which could be expanded to 32 KB. Its 5V DC CDP18S023 power supply had an ouput 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 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 operation. A run/reset switch was used to start user programs or the operating system, respectively.

A simple 4-kilobit 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 COSMAC VIP was shipped with 20 video games, which were programmed in CHIP-8. CHIP-8 was an early interpreted programming language that was used on this machine and other early microcomputers, such as the Telmac 1800.