Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The COSMAC ELF and Me
In the late 1970's I was working for a small cable television station, cable Channel 11 in Pharr, Texas, when I realized I could build my own computer. I had been following articles in Kilobaud Microcomputing, Byte, and Popular Electronics magazines with great interest. For sometime I studied a series of construction articles for a home brew computer designed around an early microprocessor, the RCA 1802. The articles, written by Joseph Weisbecker and published in Popular Electronics beginning in August, 1976, were titled "Build the COSMAC ELF", parts 1 through 4. But starting such a project seemed formidable until one day my boss, John Toland, owner, operator, and chief engineer of Canal ONCE, purchased the RCA Studio II, an early video game console, from Radio Shack. John and I were fascinated with it's design and immediately disassembled it. There we found, in the center of it all, an RCA 1802. At around $69.00 it was a steep purchase for me, but I did not hesitate to buy my own.
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I fondly remember the Cosmac Elf. I was still a child at the time. My dad had a radio and TV repair business. I used my grass cutting money to purchase the Elf, one chip at a time... Was GLORIOUS when I finally got life out of the toggle switches an saw the 7 segment LEDs glowing...
ReplyDeleteThanks for you comment Michael. It was a little tougher to buy computer parts at the time. What a great learning experience it was! When I got it working I toggled in the program to play part of "Whats it all about Alfie". John didn't believe I was programming until then. That same port later became the cassette tape interface as I recall. Or was that my S100 8080? Sigh...so many years ago.
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