RCA 1802

7 Articles

New Zealand’s First Microcomputer May Be This 1802

May 24, 2023 by 13 Comments

Hardware hackers of a certain age likely got started with microcontrollers via the RCA 1802 — a relatively easy-to-use processor that was the subject of several excellent articles in Popular Electronics magazine back in the late 1970s. [Al’s Geek Lab] has an interview with [Hugh Anderson], who saw the articles and eventually designed the HUG1802, which may be the first microcontroller kit designed and sold in New Zealand.

The 1802 was very attractive at the time since it was inexpensive, static, didn’t require exotic voltages, and had a DMA system that allowed you to load software without complex ROMs. He initially marketed a kit unsuccessfully until an Australian company convinced him to create a proper PC board — the resulting kit was sold to about 100 customers.

The HUG1802 reminded us somewhat of the Quest Super Elf since it had a keypad, a cassette interface, and even a TV output. The 1802 had a DMA-enabled chip that made crude memory-mapped video output. The computer eventually morphed into the ETI 660, which they talk about at the end of the interview.

A lot of people built 1802 computers back in those days. If you don’t have an 1802, but you have an Arduino… ell, there’s always emulation.

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Inside CHIP-8

December 7, 2020 by 4 Comments

Certain old computers — most frequently those using the RCA 1802 — were fond of using an early form of byte-code interpreter for programs, especially games. The interpreter, CHIP-8, was very simple to create but offered high-level features that were tedious to recreate in the native assembly language. Because there are a fair number of simple games written in CHIP-8, there are of course, emulators for it, and [River Gillis] decided to look inside the CHIP-8 byte code interpreter.

Part of the power of CHIP-8 was it only had 35 virtual instructions. That was important when you were trying to shoehorn a game and the interpreter into a very small memory. Remember, in those days 1K of memory wasn’t an unusual number, although the prototypical CHIP-8 host would have 4K.

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COSMAC ELF Lives Again, In FPGA

January 23, 2020 by 44 Comments

Looking around at the personal computing markets in modern times, there seem to be a lot of choices in the market. In reality, though, almost everything runs on hardware from a very small group of companies, and software is often available across platforms. This wasn’t the case in the personal computing boom of the 70s and 80s, where different computers were wildly different in hardware and even architecture. The Cosmac ELF was one of the more interesting specimens from this era, and this one has been meticulously reproduced on an FPGA.

The original hardware was based on an RCA 1802 microprocessor and had a rudimentary (by today’s standards) set of switches and buttons as the computer’s inputs. It was low cost, even for the time, but was one of the first single-board computers available. This recreation is coded in SpinalHDL and the simplicity of the original hardware makes it relatively easy to understand. The FPGA is cycle-accurate to the original hardware, too, which makes it nearly perfect even without any of the original hardware.

The project’s creator, [Winston] aka [wel97459], found that SpinalHDL made this project fun to work on (and released his code on his GitHub page), and was able to get the code down to just 1500 lines to recreate the original hardware. It’s very impressive, and also an accessible read for anyone interested in some of the more unique computers offered during the early computer renaissance in the 70s.

KIM-1 To COSMAC Elf Conversion — Sort Of

July 25, 2017 by 11 Comments

In the mid-1970s, if you had your own computer, you probably built it. If you had a lot of money and considerable building skill, you could make an Altair 8800 for about $395 — better than the $650 to have it built. However, cheaper alternatives were not far behind.

In 1976, Popular Electronics published plans for a computer called the COSMAC Elf which you could build for under $100, and much less if you had a good junk box. The design was simple enough that you could build it on a piece of perf board or using wire wrap. We featured the online archive of the entire Popular Electronics collection, but hit up page 33 of this PDF if you want to jump right to the article that started it all. The COSMAC Elf is a great little machine built around a 40-pin RCA 1802 processor, and for many was the first computer they owned. I lost my original 1802 computer in a storm and my recent rebuild in another completely different kind of storm. But there is a way to reclaim those glory days without starting from scratch.  I’m going to repurpose another retro-computing recreation; the KIM-1.

I’ll admit it, Rewiring a real KIM-1 to take an 1802 CPU would be difficult and unnecessary and that’s not what this article is about. However, I did have a KIM UNO — [Oscar’s] respin of the classic computer using an Arduino mini pro. Looking at the keyboard, it occurred to me that the Arduino could just as easily simulate an 1802 as it could a 6502. Heck, that’s only two digits different, right?

The result is pretty pleasing. A “real” Elf had 8 toggle switches, but there were several variations that did have keypads, so it isn’t that far off. Most Elf computers had 256 bytes of memory (without an upgrade) but the 1802 UNO (as I’m calling it) has 1K. There’s also a host of other features, including a ROM and a monitor for loading and debugging programs that doesn’t require any space in the emulated 1802.

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COSMAC Elf Calculator Gets New Firmware

July 11, 2017 by 18 Comments

Everyone remembers their first. Their first CPU, that is. For many of us, it was the RCA 1802 thanks to the COSMAC Elf articles that ran in Popular Electronics. The later versions of the chip family were much better but were never as popular, but the 1805 did find its way into a printing calculator for dimensions from a company named Boyd. Some of these recently showed up on the surplus market and–of course–were subsequently hacked.

[Bill Rowe] is active in the groups that still work with the 1802. Because of some specialized uses you can still get the chips readily, some four decades after they were new. Other computers at the time were difficult to build and relatively expensive, while for $100 almost anyone could wire wrap a simple 1802-based computer together in a weekend or less.

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Vintage COSMAC Elf Is Pretty Close To Original

March 6, 2017 by 31 Comments

Popular Electronics was famous for the article introducing the Altair 8800 back in 1975 (well, the cover date was 1975; it really came out in late 1974). That was so popular (no pun intended), that they ran more computer construction articles, including the SWTPC 680 late in 1975. But in 1976 a very popular article ran on building a very simple computer called the COSMAC ELF. [Youtubba] had an Altair, but always wanted a “cute” COSMAC ELF. Now, forty-something years later, he finally got around to it. He made the very detailed video about his experience, below.

Surprisingly, he didn’t have to look very hard for too many of the components as most of them were available from Digikey. He had to get compatible RAM chips, the 1802 CPU and LED displays. He also couldn’t find a look-alike crystal, so he used a fake one and a hidden oscillator. The result looks awfully close to the original. He even did a nice front panel using Front Panel Express.

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Anthropomorphizing Microprocessors

November 26, 2014 by 28 Comments

Vintage microprocessors usually do something, be it just sitting in an idle loop, calculating something, or simply looking cool in a collector’s cabinet. [Lee] has come up with a vastly cooler use for an old microprocessor: he’s anthropomorphized it by wiring LEDs up to the address lines and arranged those LEDs into a face. After wiring up the right circuit, the face of LEDs slowly changes expressions, making this tiny little board react to random electronic fluctuations.

The CPU used for this project is the RCA 1802, best known for being the smarts in the COSMAC Elf, a very early microprocessor training computer, but still capable of teaching the basics of computing today, albeit on a processor that isn’t made any more with an instruction set that is barely supported by anything modern.

[Lee] apparently has a lot of these 1802s, and to show off how simple a microcomputer can get, he created the strangest use for a CPU we’ve ever seen. You can’t program this face of LEDs; the data bus is left floating so random values are ‘displayed’ on the face. Only one of the data lines is pulled high. This prevents the data bus from ever being 0x00, the HALT instruction.

If you’re looking for something a little more useful to do with an RCA 1802 MPU, [Lee] also has a COSMAC Elf membership card. It’s a reproduction of the famous COSMAC Elf, repackaged into a board the size of an Altoid tin. It has the 1802 onboard, a few switches and blinkenlights,  and a parallel port for interacting with peripherals.