gson@niksula.hut.fi (Andreas Gustafsson) (08/22/90)
In the late 70's, much of the microcomputer hobbyist activity here in Finland revolved around a series of popular micros based on RCA's CDP1802 (COSMAC) processor. These machines were called the Telmac 1800, Telmac 2000, Oscom Nano, TMC-600 etc. The original Telmac 1800, designed in 1977, had up to 4 kB of memory and a video output with a resolution of 32 by 64 pixels (sic!). It was apparently very similar to the ELF and VIP (which I don't know much about). These computers all used (among others) a programming language called CHIP-8. This is a small, interpreted language designed specifically for writing video games on 1802-based computers. It has less than 40 instructions, including arithmetic, control flow, graphics, and sound. The instructions are all 16 bits long and are executed by a very compact (512 bytes) virtual machine interpreter. A simple Pong-style game can usually be written in about 256 bytes of CHIP-8 and would usually be written directly in hexadecimal. Now, I would like to know more about the history of this language. Did it originate at RCA, and was it also used in the ELF and VIP? Does anyone have programs written in CHIP-8 that could be posted to the net? My reason for asking is that I have just finished a reimplementation of the CHIP-8 interpreter that runs on the HP48SX handheld calculator. It would be nice to be able to distribute some games and other programs with it when I post it to the net, and I cannot post the original games that came with my Telmac back in 1979 because I have no idea about their copyright status. By the way, there is still an active 1802 user group in Finland. Mail me for more info. -- Andreas Gustafsson Internet: gson@niksula.hut.fi Voice: +358 0 563 5592