ranger_lennier

I was looking through MESS's Studio II driver recently. http://git.redump.net/mame/tree/src/mess/drivers/studio2.c It identifies a number of clone systems, as so: // YEAR NAME PARENT COMPAT MACHINE INPUT INIT COMPANY FULLNAME FLAGS CONS( 1977, studio2, 0, 0, studio2, studio2, studio2_state, studio2, "RCA", "Studio II", GAME_IMPERFECT_SOUND | GAME_SUPPORTS_SAVE ) CONS( 1978, visicom, studio2,0, visicom, studio2, studio2_state, studio2, "Toshiba", "Visicom COM-100 (Japan)", GAME_IMPERFECT_SOUND | GAME_SUPPORTS_SAVE ) CONS( 1978, mpt02, studio2,0, mpt02, studio2, studio2_state, studio2, "Soundic", "Victory MPT-02 Home TV Programmer (Austria)", GAME_SUPPORTS_SAVE ) CONS( 1978, mpt02h, studio2,0, mpt02, studio2, studio2_state, studio2, "Hanimex", "MPT-02 Jeu TV Programmable (France)", GAME_SUPPORTS_SAVE ) CONS( 1978, mtc9016, studio2,0, mpt02, studio2, studio2_state, studio2, "Mustang", "9016 Telespiel Computer (Germany)", GAME_SUPPORTS_SAVE ) CONS( 1978, shmc1200, studio2,0, mpt02, studio2, studio2_state, studio2, "Sheen", "M1200 Micro Computer (Australia)", GAME_SUPPORTS_SAVE ) CONS( 1978, cm1200, studio2,0, mpt02, studio2, studio2_state, studio2, "Conic", "M-1200 (?)", GAME_SUPPORTS_SAVE ) CONS( 1978, apollo80, studio2,0, mpt02, studio2, studio2_state, studio2, "Academy", "Apollo 80 (Germany)", GAME_SUPPORTS_SAVE ) This made me start wondering about where the various clones were released. In particular, the Victory. MESS identifies this as coming from Austria. The odd thing is, I once purchased a Victory system on eBay from a seller in Australia. Now granted, it's not impossible that someone in Australia could have imported a system from Austria and later sold it. But I could also imagine someone just getting the countries mixed up. Does anyone know for sure? Really, it's a good time to look over the entire list. old-computers.com says the Soundic Victory is from Hong Kong. But maybe it was just manufactured there? It also says the Sheen 1200 Micro Computer is possibly from Europe, while MESS says Australia. http://www.old-computers.com/magazine/view.asp?r=2&a=5

Yeah, I think the problem is that the box is a little bent, so parts of it aren't up against the scanner glass and end up being captured out of focus. Some scanners are better about this than others. If weighting it down doesn't help, you might think about what scanners you have access to (from work, for example). Probably dedicated scanners will be better than the ones build into printers. I love my "Epson Perfection 4490 Photo" scanner, but of course most people don't scan as much as I have.

Impressive effort there. I was particularly interested in hearing about the arcade machine tested in 1975. The first widely released arcade game to use a microprocessor (rather than a bunch of TTL chips) is Midway's Gun Fight, which also came out in 1975. So if RCA's game used a CPU like the Studio II, it would be an extremely early example of this. If there's a way to track down more information, I'd definitely be interested in hearing more about the game, and seeing if anything from it (photos, documents, ROMs, etc.) still exists.

It looks like Terry also edited The VIPER newsletter for the Cosmac VIP. http://mattmik.com/downloads/viper/Volume1Issue01.pdf I've never really used the paid services for finding people, but this might be him: http://www.backgroundfinder.com/terry-l-laudereau/

Sorry about that. http://www.mediafire.com/download/nc5y7bzo5yq1tbs/Micro_Studio_News_grayscale.zip

Well, I've just been through the worst computer repair fiasco of my life—random computer crashes, backup software that doesn't work, replaced motherboard followed by replaced graphics card-apparently the graphics card killed the motherboard in a bizarre murder-suicide. Anyway, I think I've finally got everything working, so I could finish up the newsletter scanning task. y-bot sent me seven issues of Micro Studio News—issues 0-6. It ran from July 1979 to May 1980. Issue 0 was an original newsletter, and was a short, free issue to promote the newsletter. The others were available with a paid subscription. I only got photocopies of these (probably copied long ago). For the most part, these are easily readable. Issue 6 does mention some material prepared for the next issue, which would have been the first issue of the second volume. But they also discuss the struggle to get subscribers, so I suspect these are the only issues ever released. The newsletter tends to be quite technical. Most of it is user-submitted programs. These had to be typed in hexadecimal using a homebrew cart. There was also no way to save the programs. I'm not surprised that this didn't catch on. Computers and even some consoles, like the Astrocade, had official support for languages like BASIC and could load and save using external media like cassette tapes. I'm impressed by the people who did program under these constraints, though. If anyone uses these to make ROM files, please let us know. Most people will probably want the black and white scans, which only total 9MB. I've also uploaded my original grayscale scans—185MB total. The only real problem I noticed is page 4 of Issue 3, which is difficult to read in the lower left corner. It looks just as bad on the photocopy, though. Black and White: http://www.mediafire.com/download/7v3331o7ocw9z1a/Micro_Studio_News_bw.zip Grayscale: http://www.mediafire.com/download/7v3331o7ocw9z1a/Micro_Studio_News_bw.zip I hope someone finds these interesting. If anyone sees problems with the scans, let me know soon, since I don't want to hang onto the paper version much longer. Thanks y-bot for the loan and for your patience!

Finally, another Studio II game dumped! This time it's Fun With Numbers. Thanks to brolly for buying the cart, Charles MacDonald for dumping it, and Marcel for adding the .st2 header. Here is the dump in various formats. Use the .st2 format for Emma 02, and the .rom format for MESS. http://www.mediafire.com/download/og13p9ys65y54is/fwn.zip Be sure to read the manual or the game won't make any sense. I played a two player game of Guess The Number and had fun with it once I figured out the rules. It's a good logic puzzle--the same basic idea as Mastermind. I posted links to my full scan set earlier, or if you just want this manual, get it here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/rra6vb8zl3a9diu/fun_with_numbers_manual.zip I believe that all of the American and European releases have been dumped now. We haven't always dumped both an American and European cart for games released in multiple regions, but in cases where we have dumped both, they've always been the same. There are still some missing games for the Visicom, the Japanese clone.

There's a stray parentheses at the end of the link. It worked for me once I removed it. http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/rcacosmac/

Yeah, that's me--same address too. Thanks!

I'd be glad to scan them if you like. I have a good scanner and some free time for a little while.

I don't think any of the other USA games are spectacularly rare. I recall getting a system and all the other carts relatively quickly and inexpensively. I got all mine on eBay. I just now searched for "RCA Studio II" and found ten auctions with one or more carts. I don't see a system for sale right now, but I'd say there's one on there more often than not. ' But I'll agree that Bingo could very well have just been the last USA release before RCA abandoned the system, and totally flopped.

That's really neat--thanks for the scans! Do you know what source those pages came from? It sounds like some sort of newsletter, though I can't tell just from those pages if it was exclusively about the Studio II or not. Do you have any other documents? Interestingly, it sounds like it first started talking about making the programming cart after RCA had already abandoned the system. Was there a way to save/load the games, or would you have to type them in every time?

There were some Studio II newsletters--see this post for example: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/8863-rca-studio-ii/#entry85297 I don't think they've ever been scanned, though. Does anyone know where to find these? They might have some more information for us.

I own one, but it will be a few months before I can get it back and get it dumped. So if anyone is able to do it beforehand, that's cool. The guy who dumped mine lives in California, USA. Someone on the MESS forums also talked about sending him a cart (there was one cheap on eBay), but I'm not sure if that's happening or not.

Haha, just did a search and realized that Dan had the Demonstration cart as well. http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?113201-Can-we-please-remove-bingo-from-the-quot-offical-release-quot-RCA-Studio-II-library&p=1324690&viewfull=1#post1324690

I originally assumed this came from the scans I uploaded, but I actually didn't find this exact passage. I did, however, find two similar descriptions of the Tester I cartridge. One is in the Studio II Service manual, available here: http://www.mediafire.com/?7jod7m8a63za1n9 The other is in a book chapter scanned by Peter Trauner (PeT). I'm not actually sure what the book is, but you can get his scans here: http://www.mediafire.com/?ojxprk04sqwfihf

I think it's actually "Tester I" (Roman numeral). This fits in with the pattern RCA named their cart series. I don't think the use of a number necessarily indicates that there was a Tester II. For example, some Blackjack carts/manuals/boxes are labeled "TV Casino I", even though there was no "TV Casino II" when it came out. I have seen Bingo referred to as "TV Casino II", however. I actually have two variations of the Blackjack box. One says "TV Casino I", and the other just says "TV Casino Series". I'm not sure which is older.

Well, between the links in posts #407 and #411 there are a LOT of photos from the show. And the photo that says Dan wasn't in it could narrow it down some. Kind of a tedious task still, but if you do look through them, let us know.

Cool to finally have a name and (obsolete) e-mail regarding the USA Bingo sighting. I also now know that more people than just Tempest saw it. In that same thread, someone says he did get in touch with Al Backiel. Meant to follow up earlier... I checked with Al, but it's not him, and he can't recall who it was, though he said it was the guy in the booth next to him. He also says Joe was there and might recall, or possibly David Newman (the organizer) might recall. http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?72720-RCA-Studio-II-bingo&p=1917729&viewfull=1#post1917729

Hmmm, I never did see a picture with a Studio II set up to play. It's a small enough venue that you'd think the table would almost have to be in some of the photos, though. But you probably couldn't make it out easily unless it was a close-up shot. SlyDC--do you still have your Philly Classic 2 photos? The Philly Classic site lists 33 photos from you, but some of them were never archived.

I can't read the title, but that one looks to me like it matches the Biorhythm box.

I found the motherload of Philly Classic 2 photos on the Philly Classic website. Of course, the website isn't actually up anymore, but most of the pictures are on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. http://web.archive.org/web/20011031044247/http://www.phillyclassic.com/pc2k1/ I looked through a bunch of pictures and found exactly two with a Studio II in them. The only game I can specifically make out is TV School House I. I wish people had 10 megapixel cameras back in 2001. One of the pictures may show the person who brought the system. http://web.archive.org/web/20020527002440/http://www.phillyclassic.com/pc2k1/JoelP/DSCF0035.JPG http://web.archive.org/web/20010903070422/http://phillyclassic.com/pc2k1/JohnD/philly36.jpg Here are some other sites with photos from the show (but I didn't see a Studio II in them). http://cafeman.www9.50megs.com/atari/phillyexpo2001/ http://www.tomheroes.com/Video%20Games%20FS/Retrotimes/retrotimes_44.htm#Phillyclassic,%20the%20Little%20Show%20That%20Grew%20Huge!

I don't know about those games. But it does seem likely to me that Sumo Wrestling for the Visicom was made in Japan, since there's no significant fan base for the sport in the other regions.

It was good hearing the full story from Tempest. I also would have thought someone would take a picture of it. Of course, Philly Classic 3 was in 2002, before everyone carried a camera in their pocket at all times. I looked for some convention photos, and this is the only good set I found: https://atariage.com/features/philly_2002/index.html I didn't see any Studio II stuff in the photos. I suppose the Bingo owner could be in some of them, but I'd be impressed if anyone could still recognize him after 11 years. If anyone else took photos there, could you please check if you have any Studio II photos?

OK, it does look like that's what the instruction films are for. ianoid thought he had the manual for CAS-130, so hopefully we'll get a scan when he's able to get them out of storage in a few months.