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| SYSTEM 00 designed and built by Joe Weisbecker 1971 |
Studio II Brief History
The Studio II was a 2nd generation video game system. Due to internal delays at RCA it finished second place in a race to be the first video game system controlled by a computer microprocessor and use ROM (Read-Only-Memory) based game cartridges. It was announced for sale about a month (January 1977) after Fairchild Channel "F" ROM cartridge game consoles (November 1976).The Studio II displayed in low resolution black and white on a broadcast TV receiver, showing 64 horizontal by 32 vertical square pixels. It used plug-in interchangeable game cartridges with 1024 bytes ROM (Read Only Memory) that stored games.
During 1977 we were working on a Studio III game console that displayed in color and improved the sound. But after Atari introduced their Atari Video Computer System (later renamed Atari 2600) in September, 1977, these RCA and Fairchild products were no longer competitive. The Atari VCS features were superior to the Studio II, Studio III, and Fairchild game systems.
RCA canceled the Studio II product due to poor sales at the end of 1977. I was fortunate that Phil Baltzer added me to his team at David Sarnoff Research Center as a Member of Technical Staff employee starting January 1, 1978. Otherwise I would be looking for work elsewhere.
Joseph Weisbecker designed the Studio II game system. It was a milestone product that came out of work spanning almost a decade. Joe developed a series of prototypes and products for consumer/arcade games and educational computing devices beginning in 1971 and ending about 1980.
Studio II Development Chronology
The following sections are in chronological order covering a decade of work by Joseph A Weisbecker and others. This is an outline of material I think is important and that relates to the Studio 2. I would like to expand this outline, but it will take a full time accomplished technology historian and writer to give it full depth and provide us with a biography of Joe Weisbecker's full life's work.1971 SYSTEM 00
The SYSTEM 00 is a personal computer (photo above) that Joe Weisbecker designed and built at home with discrete logic TTL integrated circuits. It had the foundation architecture and instruction set for what would become the COSMAC CDP1802 microprocessor used in the Studio II game console. I chose 1971 as the starting date based on schematic diagrams annotated with dates from October through December 1971, in the SYSTEM 00 Manual written by Joe Weisbecker.This computer used an oscilloscope as a display with a resolution of 32 wide x 32 high pixels. It also used a punched card reader that allowed you to load a program on cards as you dropped them in sequence into the reader. There were no card reader motors, it used gravity to scan the cards as they fell. Joe wrote a game called "Deduce" for SYSTEM 00.
1972-75 FRED
FRED (Flexible Recreational Educational Device) prototypes were forerunners to the RCA COSMAC computer systems. Because RCA got out of the computer business in 1971, its management would not support any project with computer in its title, so Joe named it FRED.The FRED 1 was built with discrete logic TTL integrated circuits. Later FRED 2 used the CDP1801 microprocessor integrated circuit adding more instructions and features of the SYSTEM 00. There was a version of FRED 2 computer (1974) that was used to develop computer games running the 1801 microprocessor.
The FRED 2 computer had a cassette tape recorder interface to write and read programs into computer memory.
1974-1975 COSMAC MicroTutor
This board was used to teach 1801 microprocessor programming and logic.1975 RCA ARCADE GAME
The RCA Arcade games used the RCA 1801 microprocessor, a pair of integrated circuits. The Arcade games never sold but were placed in a shopping mall to measure the concept marketability. Four games were planned, Swords, Bowling/Tag, Mines, and Chase II.The Arcade Games used an interpreter language, named FEL-1 ( FRED 2 Experimental Language), to code games. It was the predecessor to the Studio II interpreter used to write games for the Studio II and III consoles. There were variations of FRED interpreters written.
During this time the two chip 1801 was combined into a single integrated circuit, the CDP1802 and more instructions were added.
1976 COSMAC ELF
This 1802 microprocessor computer training tutor, COSMAC ELF, was published as a four part series in Popular Electronics starting with the August 1976 edition before I started working on Studio II game programming.1976-1977 STUDIO II
The Studio II developed from the RCA Arcade Game systems and used the CDP1802 microprocessor. Like the arcade games it used yet another version of an interpreter for writing games.
1977-1978 STUDIO III
Plans were under way for Studio III game consoles. RCA stopped manufacturing the Studio II at the end of 1977. The Studio III was manufactured and sold outside the USA, but not by RCA directly. Various manufacturers sold Studio III clones for use with both NTSC and PAL (Europe/Asia) TV receivers.I wrote a pinball game for the Studio III. Phil Baltzer asked me to document the game code to help game developers who would later write games for the Studio III. The document is in the Weisbecker papers at the Hagley Library, Accession 2464, Box 873, Folder 6, "STUDIO, Pinball Game Documentation", 1977. There no author listed, because as Phil Baltzer explained to me, even though I wrote the document, I was not an official member of technical staff at the RCA David Sarnoff Research Center, that was publishing it. I was an employee of RCA Distributor and Special Products working in Phil's team, so my name could not appear on a Research Center document.
1977 STUDIO IV
The Studio IV game console was being developed in the fall months of 1977. There exists a Studio IV interpreter binary code tape in The College of New Jersey, Sarnoff Collection, 1/1/1978 from Joe Weisbecker. Joe demonstrated the Studio IV interpreter on a modified VIP computer to a group of us during the first week of January 1978.
1977-1980 COSMAC VIP
The RCA MicroComputer Products division, Lancaster, PA sold the COSMAC VIP as a kit and assembled board, latter adding plug-in boards for more RAM, color, and sound, etc. There were two interpreters for the VIP, CHIP8 was a simplified streamlined version of the Studio II interpreter, and CHIP8X an expanded interpreter for sound and color programming. The VIP used cassette tape recorders for storing programs. The tape format had evolved and was refined from the FRED cassette recording formats.The early COSMAC VIP prototypes were used as program development boards for the Studio III game consoles since they had similar architectures.
I wrote an integer BASIC for the VIP and it was published as a technical document by the David Sarnoff Research Center in 1978. It was sold as a plug-in 4K ROM cartridge for the VIP computer.
The MicroComputer Products division also published several VIP computer game manuals and guides, that have listings of my games and other programs for the VIP computer.
A RCA COSMAC VIP and VIP II terminal were also developed and sold that ran BASIC (not my code though).
Sources and References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_Studio_IIhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_generation_of_video_game_consoles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Channel_F
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600
http://www.exemark.com/Microcontrollers/PopularElecwebc.pdf
Hagley Museum and Library: Manuscripts and Archives Department, Wilmington, Delaware.
Joseph A. Weisbecker papers, 1962-1982, Accession 2464, Box 872, 873, 874, 875.
Billie Joe Call papers, 1974-1991, Accession 2464, Box 919, 920.
Sarnoff Collection, The College of New Jersey, Trenton, NJ
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