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The RCA Cosmac VIP (1977) was an early microcomputer that was aimed at video games. For a price of $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 CDP1802 processor; along with a crystal clock. It had 2,048 bytes of RAM, which could be expanded to 32,000 bytes. It's 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.
It connected to a TV for video output (using a CDP1861 chip), and sound could be played using it's 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 that ranged from 0 to F. LED indicators were used to display power status and tape operation. A run/reset switch was used to start programs or the operating system, respectively.
A simple 4-kilobit CMOS operating system was built in to it's ROM. It allowed one to type in programs using it's hex keyboard, show memory bytes on it's display, step through the contents of it's RAM, and view the values of the registers. It 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.
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