EMMA 02

General Information

The Cosmac VIP (Video Interface Processor) was sold as a DIY kit very similar to the Cosmac Elf. The VIP came with a fairly basic 'monitor' program in ROM to type in hex code and possibility to save and load from cassette.

At least the following expansion board were made available:

• VP550 Super Sound System, a 2 channel tone generator with a span of 4 octaves and possibility to connect a simple drum computer
• VP551 Super Sound 4-channel Expander Package, a 4 channel tone generator with a span of 4 octaves and possibility to connect a simple drum computer, basically consisting of 2 VP550 boards and one VP576
• VP570 4KB RAM board
• VP575 Four Board Expander, needed to connect 4 VP570 boards to be able to add 16KB RAM
• VP576 Two Board Expander, needed to connect 2 VP550 boards
• VP580 Expansion Keypad, adding 1 or 2 keypads to the VIP, either connected to the VP585 or VP590
• VP585 Expansion Keypad Interface Board, needed to connect additional keypads if the VP590 board was not used
• VP590 Colour Board, based on the CDP1864, the colour version of the CDP1861, for support of 8 colours with the same resolution as the 1861
• VP595 Simple Sound Board, a 1 channel tone generator with ability to generate 255 different tone frequencies

Technical specifications

Clock: 1.7609 MHz
Memory:
      2 KB RAM (expandable on main board to 4KB)
      512 Bytes ROM
Video: CDP1861
Sound: One fixed frequency tone
Keyboard: CD4515 (for hexadecimal keypad)

Screen shot

Cosmac VIP running a game called blockout written in the Chip 8x interpreter and using the colour and simple sound boards as well as a second hex keypad for 2 players games.