New find: RCA Studio II

From: Phil Clayton <musicman38_at_mindspring.com>
Date: Fri Dec 24 22:38:17 1999

>Does anyone out there have any pointers to internals information? I'd love
>to pull the ROM and disassemble the code, but with no idea of which I/O
>port the video is on nor how the game controllers are interfaced, it makes
>reverse engineering the code more difficult (of course, knowing what the
code
>does can make reverse engineering the *hardware* much easier ;-)


You are in luck. I am a collector of old video games, and the RCA Studio II
is by far my most favorite. I have one in mint condition still in the
original box. Also another one that I have modified for various projects.
BTW: I have the schematics for the machine.

This machine has some very interesting history, and I have complied 20 pages
on it.

What I thought what you may be interested in is that in 1978 I purchased
plans on how to turn this game machine into a working fully programmable
computer, in 1802 machine/assembly language. The only thing required is to
burn an EPROM and mount it on a circuit board that plugs into the game slot
on the RCA.
Essentially you have a cartridge that you plug in and the machine becomes a
programmable computer almost exactly like the RCA Cosmac computer..
I have the complete diagrams and the instruction set for the EPROM you would
need to burn. Also the basic schematics for the game unit itself..

The fact that the RCA Studio II has 2 keypads it makes it easy to type in
your program and display the results on your television.. I modified mine
the use a composite video monitor for better resolution..

Let me know if you are interested, and I will attempt to scan the diagrams
for you..

Phil..
Received on Fri Dec 24 1999 - 22:38:17 GMT