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RCA 1802
The COSMAC (Complementary Symmetry Monolithic Array Computer) is an 8-bit microprocessor family introduced by RCA. It is historically notable as the first CMOS microprocessor. The first production model was the two-chip CDP1801R and CDP1801U, which were later combined into the single-chip CDP1802. The 1802 represented the majority of COSMAC production, and today the entire line is known simply as the RCA 1802. The processor design traces its history to an experimental home computer designed by Joseph Weisbecker in the early 1970s, built at his home using TTL components. RCA began development of the CMOS version of the processor design in 1973, sampling it in 1974 with plans to move to a single-chip implementation immediately. Jerry Herzog led the design of the single-chip version, which sampled in 1975 and entered production in 1976. In contrast to most designs of the era, which were fabricated using the NMOS process, the COSMAC was implemented in CMOS form and used static ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dual In-line Package
In microelectronics, a dual in-line package (DIP or DIL), is an electronic component package with a rectangular housing and two parallel rows of electrical connecting pins. The package may be through-hole mounted to a printed circuit board (PCB) or inserted in a socket. The dual-inline format was invented by Don Forbes, Rex Rice and Bryant Rogers at Fairchild R&D in 1964, when the restricted number of leads available on circular transistor-style packages became a limitation in the use of integrated circuits. Increasingly complex circuits required more signal and power supply leads (as observed in Rent's rule); eventually microprocessors and similar complex devices required more leads than could be put on a DIP package, leading to development of higher-density chip carriers. Furthermore, square and rectangular packages made it easier to route printed-circuit traces beneath the packages. A DIP is usually referred to as a DIP''n'', where ''n'' is the total number of pins. For e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Direct Memory Access
Direct memory access (DMA) is a feature of computer systems and allows certain hardware subsystems to access main system memory independently of the central processing unit (CPU). Without DMA, when the CPU is using programmed input/output, it is typically fully occupied for the entire duration of the read or write operation, and is thus unavailable to perform other work. With DMA, the CPU first initiates the transfer, then it does other operations while the transfer is in progress, and it finally receives an interrupt from the DMA controller (DMAC) when the operation is done. This feature is useful at any time that the CPU cannot keep up with the rate of data transfer, or when the CPU needs to perform work while waiting for a relatively slow I/O data transfer. Many hardware systems use DMA, including disk drive controllers, graphics cards, network cards and sound cards. DMA is also used for intra-chip data transfer in multi-core processors. Computers that have DMA channels can trans ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff (February 27, 1891 – December 12, 1971) was an American businessman and pioneer of American radio and television. Throughout most of his career, he led the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his retirement in 1970. He ruled over an ever-growing telecommunications and media empire that included both RCA and NBC, and became one of the largest companies in the world. Named a Reserve Brigadier General of the Signal Corps in 1945, Sarnoff thereafter was widely known as "The General." Sarnoff is credited with ''Sarnoff's law'', which states that the value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers. Early life and career David Sarnoff was born to a Jewish family in Uzlyany, a small town in the Russian Empire, now part of Belarus, the son of Abraham Sarnoff and Leah Privin. Abraham emigrated to the United States and raised funds to bring the family. Sarnoff spent much of his early c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ROM Cartridge
A ROM cartridge, usually referred to in context simply as a cartridge, cart, or card, is a replaceable part designed to be connected to a consumer electronics device such as a home computer, video game console or, to a lesser extent, electronic musical instruments. Read-Only Memory, ROM cartridges allow users to rapidly load and access programs and data alongside a floppy drive in a home computer; in a video game console, the cartridges are standalone. At the time around their release, ROM cartridges provided security against Software copyunauthorised copying of software. However, the manufacturing of ROM cartridges was more expensive than floppy disks, and the storage capacity was smaller. ROM cartridges and slots were also used for various hardware accessories and enhancements. The widespread usage of the ROM cartridge in video gaming applications has led it to be often colloquially called a game cartridge. History ROM cartridges were popularized by early home computer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Game Console
A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a television or other display devices and controlled with a separate game controller, or handheld consoles, which include their own display unit and controller functions built into the unit and which can be played anywhere. Hybrid consoles combine elements of both home and handheld consoles. Video game consoles are a specialized form of a home computer geared towards video game playing, designed with affordability and accessibility to the general public in mind, but lacking in raw computing power and customization. Simplicity is achieved in part through the use of game cartridges or other simplified methods of distribution, easing the effort of launching a game. However, this leads to ubiquitous proprietary formats that creates competition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joyce Weisbecker
Joyce Weisbecker (born 1958) is an American retired engineer and actuary. She became the first female commercial video game designer in 1976. She considers herself the first indie developer, given that she did her work as an independent contractor. Life and career Weisbecker was born in New Jersey as the daughter of Joseph Weisbecker, an engineer with RCA who constructed computers in his spare time. Joyce Weisbecker learned how to program her father's prototypes. While a student at Rider University, Weisbecker created games for the RCA Studio II console. As demonstration projects she developed two games for the RCA COSMAC VIP, ''Snake Race'' and ''Jackpot''. The games were included in the computer's manual as type-in programs in CHIP-8 source code. Weisbecker's first commercial game was ''TV Schoolhouse I'', a quiz game for the RCA II that she programmed in a week in August 1976, and was paid $250 for. In October 1976, she developed ''Speedway'' and ''Tag'', two action games. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cassette Tape
The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company Philips in 1963, Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either already containing content as a prerecorded cassette (''Musicassette''), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although other tape cassette formats have also existed - for example the Microcassette - the generic term ''cassette tape'' is normally always used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity. Its uses have ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers; the Compact Cassette technology was originally designed for dictation machines, but improvements in fidelity led to it supplanting the stereo 8-track cartridge and reel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Character Generator
A character generator, often abbreviated as CG, is a device or software that produces static or animated text (such as news crawls and credits rolls) for keying into a video stream. Modern character generators are computer-based, and they can generate graphics as well as text. History Monoscopes were used as character generators for text mode video rendering in computer displays for a short time in the 1960s. The CBS Laboratories Vidiac, and the A. B. Dick 990 System, were among the earliest character generators for broadcast television. CBS Laboratories later developed the more advanced Vidifont system in preparation for the 1968 US presidential elections, where a rapid method of all-electronic character generation was required so that news outlets could identify unexpected interviewees on the spot. A similar generator using analogue electronics, Anchor, was developed by the BBC in 1970 and used in the general election later that year. Usage In the television business in N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keypad
A keypad is a block or pad of buttons set with an arrangement of digits, symbols, or alphabetical letters. Pads mostly containing numbers and used with computers are numeric keypads. Keypads are found on devices which require mainly numeric input such as calculators, television remotes, push-button telephones, vending machines, ATMs, point of sale terminals, combination locks, safes, and digital door locks. Many devices follow the E.161 standard for their arrangement. Uses and functions A computer keyboard usually has a small numeric keypad on the side, in addition to the other number keys on the top, but with a calculator-style arrangement of buttons that allow more efficient entry of numerical data. This number pad (commonly abbreviated to ''numpad'') is usually positioned on the right side of the keyboard because most people are right-handed. Many laptop computers have special function keys that turn part of the alphabetical keyboard into a numerical keypad as there ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Altair 8800
The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in ''Radio-Electronics'', and in other hobbyist magazines. The Altair is widely recognized as the spark that ignited the microcomputer revolution as the first commercially successful personal computer. The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a ''de facto'' standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC. "This announcement ltair 8800ranks with IBM's announcement of the System/360 a decade earlier as one of the most significant in the history of computing." History While serving at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, Ed Roberts and Forrest M. Mims III decided to use their electronics background ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Circuit Board
A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in Electrical engineering, electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a Lamination, laminated sandwich structure of conductive and insulating layers: each of the conductive layers is designed with an artwork pattern of traces, planes and other features (similar to wires on a flat surface) Chemical milling, etched from one or more sheet layers of copper Lamination, laminated onto and/or between sheet layers of a Insulator (electricity), non-conductive substrate. Electrical components may be fixed to conductive pads on the outer layers in the shape designed to accept the component's terminals, generally by means of soldering, to both electrically connect and mechanically fasten them to it. Another manufacturing process adds Via (electronics), vias: plated-through holes that allow interconnections between layers. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio Shack
RadioShack, formerly RadioShack Corporation, is an American retailer founded in 1921. At its peak in 1999, RadioShack operated over 8,000 worldwide stores named RadioShack or Tandy Electronics in the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. Outside of those territories, the company licensed other companies to use the RadioShack brand name in parts of Asia, North Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In February 2015, RadioShack Corporation filed for Chapter 11 protection under United States bankruptcy law after 11 consecutive quarterly losses. By then, it was operating only in the United States and Latin America. In May 2015, General Wireless Inc., an affiliate of Standard General, bought the company's assets, including the RadioShack brand name and related intellectual property, for US$26.2 million. General Wireless Operations Inc. was formed to operate the RadioShack stores, and General Wireless IP Holdings LLC was formed to hold the intellectual prop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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