ajavamind

Hi Ubersaurus, Thanks for posting the punch card information. I have been studying the System 00 and FRED (version 1) Manual documents and verified that the Deduce program dated 12/7/1971 in these two documents are all identical with the cards program. The cards have the hex codes for the program printed on them along with the hole punches making it easy to verify against the documents. Note that both of these computers had 32x32 pixel displays. There may be different versions of Deduce because the table listing Cosmac Game Development System games on my Github site are FRED II summarized from an internal RCA memo. The FRED 1 computer had more advanced hardware such as a tape cassette storage interface whereas SYSTEM 00 did not, but both had card readers. Both used discrete TTL logic on the circuit boards, no microprocessor yet, that came later with FRED II using the 1801 microprocessor. FRED II had a 32x64 display.

I cannot say for certain who wrote the tester cartridge, most likely Jack Wright (Test Engineer) and collaborating with Tom Chen, hardware engineers that I worked with at the Sarnoff labs. I vaguely recall Jack demonstrating the test program. I am not sure if engineers in Distributor and Special Products division may also have some contribution or input to the tester cartridge code/operation. -Andy Modla

I updated the https://github.com/ajavamind/Extract-WAV-Data site with a link to video explaining how I used Audacity to help with the WAV data extraction process. There are easier ways to use Audacity but the steps I talk about get the job done. I noticed some tapes only have 2047 bytes stored, so the 2048th byte is sometimes interpreted as garbage, depending on what is trimmed from the trailing end of a program segment.

OK, great, the studio2 demo rom image works! Now where is the Studio3 demo rom image? thanks!

I did not know where the studio 2 demo ROM image was located, that is why I labeled it lost. I did not mean source code document. Thanks for the link to the studio 2 demo rom image, I will try it in the emulator. And I do not know what Toshiba Visicom did. My main focus is on RCA games.

I updated the README document at https://github.com/ajavamind/rca-studio2 to show the evolution of COSMAC and how studio2 fits in. I added sections on RCA game systems preceding the Studio II. I plan on expanding the README document at https://github.com/ajavamind/Extract-WAV-Data to provide more details about the COSMAC program extraction process from a WAV file.

Thanks! Yes Tag-Bowling arc file works. I think this bowling game was a work in progress. My emulation code may also need improvement for sound too.

Thanks for your comments! I updated the studio 2 github with latest emulation code. https://github.com/ajavamind/rca-studio2 And posted WAV file audio data extraction program at https://github.com/ajavamind/Extract-WAV-Data See README in each repository for details. Andy Modla

I was able to extract the Arcade "Swords" game by Joe Weisbecker from the cassette tape WAV file (thanks to @ubersaurus) and wrote additional code to emulate the RCA Arcade console to run it. Here is a screen capture of a sample game play: I will put the WAV extraction program in a new Github repository when I find time to get it ready for publication. I will also update the archive at https://github.com/ajavamind/rca-studio2 for the arcade console emulation after I make some more edits . Now we can see how this game worked in 1975 before Studio II. Andy Modla

I'm investigating the binary image AUD_2464_09_B41_ID01_01_01.rom 2.02KB from a coin game cassette, and here is what I found so far: 1. The rom size is just over 2048 bytes, that indicates parts of RAM were stored on tape, but more likely the audio to binary conversion is not valid. 2. Analyzing the code I see an interpreter in the first 512 bytes with pseudo code starting at 0x200. The interpreter is not Studio II or CHIP-8, rather looks like FEL-1, FRED II experimental language that has origins around same time as arcade game console builds based on Hagley documents. The pseudo op code decoder matches FEL-1 for some instructions I looked at. RAM starts at 0x800 with video display at 0x900. 3. Running the code in a 1802 emulator reveals mostly valid codes, but there are major problems causing errors because it goes into an infinite loop with pseudo code program counter outside of the expected memory range. All it takes is one incorrect byte conversion unfortunately. Please try again to decode the audio to binary and compare the two stored versions on the tape. Thanks, Andy Modla