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I/O CDP 1852D •• • Now, a CMOS system that really delivers the promise of the microprocessor. It's the the 1-chip expanded RCA 1800 family with CDP1802, our new one-chip COSMAC CPU. And it gives you an unsurpassed combination of flexibility, per- COSMAC formance and cost effectiveness. Simple COSMAC architecture lowers memory costs because of 1-byte instructions and internal address pointers. It also reduces I/O costs. Plus design and learning costs. Then you have the familiar CMOS savings. Single power supply. Single-phase clock. Less cooling and other equipment, thanks to low power and high tolerances. For all these reasons, we believe no other microprocessor matches the RCA 1800 for system cost effectiveness. What's more, you can get the whole system from us: CPU, ROM, RAM,I/O. Everything you need including complete design support. For further information on the above and other solid state products, please contact: Amalgamated Wireless Valve Company Pty. Ltd. (Technical Information) 554 Parramatta Road, Ashfield, N.S.W. 2131. Phone: (02) 797 5757. Telex: 24530 Postal Address: P.O. Box 24, Ashfield, N.S.W. 2131 58 ELECTRONICS Australia, January, 1977 Victory Home TV Programmer ... has plug-in cartridges, colour & sound effects The "Victory" Home TV Programmer from Soundic is a video games stake in the game and asks the players to unit based on the COSMAC 1802 microprocessor. It offers a range of cut the cards and bet. Players can then games and amusements for one or two players, in full colour, and with draw other cards or pass, attempting to beat the dealer (the games unit). Winn- sound effects. The unit connects directly to a television set, and is ings are automatically added to the capable of providing hours of entertainment and instruction. player's total stake and losses deducted and then a new hand is dealt. You can break the bank by increasing your winn- The Home TV Programmer is attrac- of these, called "Doodle" is an excellent ings to $999. tively presented in a black and grey example of the capabilities of the These four games, with sound and col- plastic console measuring approximately system. The program transforms a col- our graphics, are in themselves excellent 375 x 170 x 65mm. As can be seen from our TV set into an electronic "canvas". At value, and would be a selling point even the photograph, the console consists of the start of the program a white dot ap- if no other games were available with a front panel with the prominent "Clear" pears at the lower left hand corner of the the unit. As it turns out however they are button, a slot for inserting cartridges pro- screen. The user can set the colour of just the beginning. grammed with various games, and two the dot by pressing keys on one keypad, At the moment there are 13 plug-in recesses which hold the keypads. The and control the movement of the dot by cartridges available, with a number of numeric keypads can be detached from keys on the other keypad to draw lines. them containing two games. the unit and held in the hand, with Each key on the pad used for changing "Spacewar/Intercept", the first cartridge almost a metre of connecting cable bet- colours also generates a musical note as to come to hand, is a variation on the ween the console and the keypads. it is operated. Other keys provide for UFO and missile theme. Two versions of Buttons on the keypads are used for erasing and re-writing lines. the game are available, again for one or the control of movement, colour, and The second game, "Patterns" is similar, two players. A good sense of timing and sound while playing the games. The unit except that once a pattern is formed it is a steady hand are necessary to launch also comes with two joystick controllers which clip in place over the keypads. Movement of the joystick then causes studs on the underside of the controllers to contact the buttons of the keypad, giving a more convenient way of con- trolling movement on the screen. Because of the mechanical arrangement of these joysticks however diagonal movement is not possible, whereas it is available by pushing the appropriate but- ton on the keypad. The Victory Home TV Programmer is similar to the Fairchild Video Entertain- ment Centre which we reviewed in December 1978. Like the Fairchild game it offers a selection of games in pre- programmed plug-in cartridges and twin hand controllers. However it has features which the Fairchild game lack- ed, such as a larger number of built-in stored in memory and automatically the missile at the appropriate time and games, a wider choice of colours which repeated, along with the musical notes steer it onto a collision course with the can be displayed and numeric keypads. generated as the colour of the pattern moving target. Players take turns, in It is also considerably cheaper than the changes. With a bit of practice it is possi- which case the games unit computes Fairchild unit. ble to create very pleasing designs in and displays their scores, or the game Because it uses a CMOS processor, the eight colours, and have them repeated can be played solo. games unit can be powered from a 6V endlessly, along with the music created The "Star War" cartridge, based on the plug pack or battery eliminator. The by the changing pattern. Up to 128 key movie of the same name, involves COSMAC processor is fairly slow, entries can be stored in memory, allow- manoeuvring spaceships around on the however, and the task of driving the ing intricate patterns to be created. screen and attempting to frame your video display further reduces its speed. Also built in is "Bowling", a representa- enemy in the viewfinder of your This means that some of the games tend tion of ten-pin bowling for two players. automatic weapons system. A musical to lack excitement because everything Each player takes turns at controlling the note tells you that you have succeeded, happens so slowly. path of a ball which can be directed to followed by a gratifying visual display as The Home TV Programmer interfaces strike the pins. The games unit the enemy ship explodes. Another ver- directly to a television set, with both automatically displays the score for each sion of the same game allows two video and sound signals fed to a VHF player and keeps track of the number of players, one the pursuer and the other modulator and input to the antenna ter- frames played. the pursued — but be careful, because minals of the set. The game we reviewed The fourth game provided by the basic the roles can be easily reversed! was set up for operation on Channel 1. unit is Blackjack, which may be played as Without a cartridge inserted the either a one or two person game. The Other cartridges available include: machine provides four games. The first machine displays each player's total (continued on p98) ELECTRONICS Australia, October, 1980 97 Victory Home TV Programmer . from p97 Concentration match; Schoolhouse II - lacking in saturation, and the unit does Maths Fun; Speedway/Tag, Pinball; and appear to suffer from interference, Biorhythm. The last named cartridge is possibly because of the plastic case but not a game, but instead computes and neither of these problems is particularly displays the user's biorhythms for a annoying. selected 32 days period. The Victory Home TV Programmer and Overall the Victory Home TV Program- cartridges are available from Radio mer represents excellent value for Despatch Service, 869 George St, money in the video games field. The unit Sydney, NSW, 2001. Recommended is robust enough to take some hard retail price of the games unit is $95.50, knocks, and the numeric keypads and including the joysticks and 6V power joystick controllers are well suited to the supply. The cartridges cost $20.00 each. hands of children. The colours are a little (PV). 98 ELECTRONICS Australia, October, 1980 A low-cost, graphics-oriented computer VIP RCA have now released an updated version of their COSMAC VIP The commands are selected by pressing one of four keys on the bottom row of single board microcomputer. Featuring a video output and cassette the hex keypad immediately after enter- interface plus many optional peripherals, the COSMAC's low cost ing the address. If memory write is should interest beginners. selected, then the next two hexadecimal digits entered on the keypad will be stored at the memory location selected. The address is then automatically in- Most of our readers will be familiar memory location on the lower right of cremented ready for the next location to with the DREAM 6800 microcomputer, the screen. be written into, making it easy to enter but few may realise that it was largely a Monitor commands are particularly long programs. 6800 version of RCA's COSMAC. In fact, straightforward, in fact there are only Programs can be checked using the the CHIPOS language operating on the four commands, viz memory read, memory read command and then saved DREAM is derived from the CHIP-8 memory write, tape read and tape write. using the tape write command. The only language interpreter on the COSMAC and the video display is virtually identical. The similarities do not end there either: both use a hex keypad for data entry, a cassette interface forprogram or data storage and a speaker output. It's natural then to compare the. DREAM and the COSMAC's other features.

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