Last updated Apr 23 2024. Edited by Herb Johnson, (c) Herb Johnson. Contact Herb at www.retrotechnology.com, an email address is on that page..
This page references software for Lee Hart's COSMAC 1802 Membership Card. This link is to my home Web page for 1802 Membership Card history, development, current status, and links to other documents.
simple test programs
Simple RAM display program
toggle in binary loaders and bit-banged serial
EF lines, serial, interrupts
a short assembly program to blink to aliens...
elf-mon, a tiny monitor program
small monitor and memory test programs by Chuck Yakym
memory test by Anthony Hill
See the 8th Web page for a small Forth.
Tiny BASIC for the 1802
Forth monitor for a hand-held calculator
Forth-79 from FIG
Lee Hart's IDIOT ROM-only monitor for the 1802
debugged IDIOT ROM monitor code and baud rates
Wasserman / Graham 1802 floating point code from Dr. Dobbs May 1979
An 1802 cross assembler in C
A multiple-CPU cross assembler in C with macro support
Some 1802 disassemblers
RCA's UT4 ROM monitor
RCA's UT5 ROM monitor as part of a calculator terminal.
RCA's UT20 ROM monitor
Microboard Computer Development System with UT62 ROM monitor and BASIC 3
RCA's UT71 ROM monitor
Membership card PC parallel port loader
PC Parallel Port loader in QBASIC
RCAbug, SCRT (subroutines), interrupts, X=P; from COSMAC data sheets
The OUT instruction and the Membership card
A 1977 data collection project with COSMAC
Morse code and the 1802
Also, you might walk through the various Web pages for each revision of the 1802 Membership Card. They often contain notes on software and hardware issues. I keep a list of revision page-links on the M/S Card home page.
In 1979, Paul Wasserman of Union, NJ (USA) wrote an article published in Dr Dobb's Journal #37, May 1979 Volume 4, titled “A Floating Point Subroutine Package for the 1802”. He produced code based on PL/M coded methods in the book "Microprocessor Programming for Computer Hobbyists" by Neil Graham, published by Tab books. The code supports four binary bytes of mantissa and two bytes binary exponent with fundamental arithmatic operations and binary/decimal conversion. His article provided a hex-listing of the code, showed address locations in the code (to relocate it); but no source. In early 2021 I disassembled the binary into assembly language based on PL/M code in the Graham book; and reproduced the article. Here's the code and article and related information. Dr Dobbs Journal at the time, released code and information published for use as I performed. Please contact me if you have further interest. - Herb Johnson
Lots of 1802 software - assemblers, compilers, interpreters, monitors, 1802 assembly code - are discussed or distributed on the groups.io cosmacelf ELF 1802 discussion group Web site. You may have to be a cosmacelf groups.io member to access their file reserve. The corresponding Web site is at cosmacelf.com.
At the cosmacelf discussion site, there's a "Files" area, where many COSMAC owners including 1802 M/S Card owners have provided software and hardware projects. Some folders are software from the various COSMAC computer producers or software developers - look for brand or name of product. There's a number of Arduino or Raspberry Pi hardware projects that use those devices as serial and file storage. There's also software to drive a traditional "PC Parallel Port", which was once common on desktop and laptop personal-computers.
Some of the cosmacelf groups.io files, are of barely-used-today softwares and projects. For instance in later 2023, the folder ORTB or "Oak Ridge Tiny Basic". That's an 1802 Tiny BASIC based on 8080 Palo Alto Tiny BASIC from Dr. Dobbs Journal. It's *not* the Tom Pittman Tiny BASIC. It was re-adapted in 2023 for 1802 MemberChip MemberShip cards by John A. Stewart. Not drawn much interest from the cosmacelf community.
There's all kinds of old 1802 software and hardware products, that are not of 21st century interest. See if one of them is interesting to you!
Another important 1802 resource, is Marcel van Tongeren's EMMA 02 COSMAC emulator. He emulates many COSMAC computers including RCA prototype, development, and early gaming systems. Of course, EMMA02 emulates the 1802 Membership Card. Importantly, his work and his emulator was able to recover early COSMAC programs from audio cassette tapes. Marcel (helped by others) then disassembled many of the programs to useful assembly source Read the details of that work and others in recovering the contents of those decades-old tapes. Other links on that page, reference the earliest COSMAC prototype computers and details of their designs.
Following below are a few programs and hardware made specifically to support the Membership Card.
May 2018: Here's a Web page on operation of the Rev J M/S card with BASIC 3 and an FTDI-chipped USB serial adapter. For many years, Lee Hart and Chuck Yakym provide a BASIC, a Tiny BASIC, and a ROM monitor as binary images or source codes for binary download on Lee Hart's Web site. See Lee Hart's 1802 Membership Card sales page under "software". There may be also copies in "The Eagle" folder by Chuck, on the cosmacelf groups.io site.
ELF2K is a ROM with software produced by Spare Time Gizmos and Bob Armstrong in the 1990's. It was provided to support the STG's ELF 2000 (also called ELF2K) COSMAC kit. Check the STG Web site for details and terms of use. In April 2018, "codedoctor" Lok used Al Williams' patches on the ELF2K ROM. See some of my notes about use of the ELF2K ROM on the 1802 M/S card.Al Williams provides and describes use of the Elf2K ROM in his files archive on the cosmacelf groups.io Web site. Bob Armstrong also has a file archive for the ELF2K and ROM on the cosmacelf groups.io site.
There's lots of discussion about the elf2K ROM in cosmacelf. It's hard to reconstruct the ROM from sources, because many of the sources are old and scattered, produced by others decades ago, and there's unclear procedures to assemble these together. The people who use or modify the ELF2K ROM regularly, often don't offer offer sources but only binaries.
Pardon the following history of Elf/OS, I describe it for purpose. Mike Riley developed Elf/OS in the early 2000's for a series of 1802 Elf computer designs; other 1802 owners were interested and involved. Then elf/OS fell out of use and interest. Mike Riley revived his interest in the early 2020's, and he developed versions 3, 4, and 5 in the course of a few years. Other developers modified and repaired versions 3 and 4 and related software. Then in 2022, Riley lost interest (the simplest way to describe it) and allowed his development Web site domain to expire by late 2023. He left his elf/OS V5 development code on GitHub. Meanwhile, a few elf/OS developers proceeded to continue development of elf/OS version 4, hosting their works on various github sites (at least three, plus forks) in a somewhat coordinated fashion. In Jan 2024, Mike Riley posted again on cosmacelf groups.io, to discuss his new work on elf/OS V5.
I described that chain of events about recent elf/OS development, to illustrate why I am unable to devote my time and effort to follow or refer-to that amount of activity. The development activity on elf/OS for the 1802, is discussed by participants, on cosmacelf groups.io. They post references to github sites and possibly Websites, plus file archives at groups.io. Go there to see current, recent, and previous elf/OS development work.
Chuck Bigham completed a Rev B kit in Jan 2011. Chuck has connected his Membership Card to a Windows PC serial port, via a Pixaxe 2002 conroller, a handful of components, and software he developed for it. Copies or updates of this software may be on his Bramblyhill.com Web site. My copies are converter.zip and convertersource.zip.
Chuck Yakym AKA "The Eagle" built a Rev B kit in early 2011, and created a Windows 32-bit program (Win XP, 7) to access and program the Membership card through the PC parallel port. That work was previously available in file archives but in 2024 is not. My copy is CosmacElfControl.zip Chuck Yakum is also the developer of a ROM monitor (binary) that Lee Hart distributes with or without an RCA-distributed BASIC3 interpreter.
In May 2012, I found "Programs for the COSMAC ELF", a series of booklets written and sold by Paul C. Moews, were scanned and made available by Matthew Mikolay and recently available from him on github. Turned out, he's local to me and also exhibited at a local to us VCF-E 8.0 show. Funny our paths did not cross. Anyway, on his WEb site he has several 1802 and Chip-8 documents. Also he wrote a CHIP-8 cross assembler called "chasm". Also he founded a Yahoo group for the VIP, rcacosmac, which expired when Yahoo ended all their groups.
CHIP-8 CHIP-8 was a simple interpreter developed by Joe Weisbecker and his colleagues, to integrate the earliest COSMAC features of graphics, storage, and COSMAC program functionality (including games) into a concise (memory-saving) assembly language, with an 1802 CHIP-8 interpreter. The concept proved out, when other people developed CHIP-8 game interpreters for other microcomputers.
In the 21st century, many people have developed CHIP-8 extentions and implementations. A Web search will find many of those developments. Unfortunately some CHIP-8 Web links and sites are only available via archive.org (Internet Wayback Machine). A 2019 Web site by Marc Bertrand, offers a CHIP-16, an update to a CHIP-12 implementation by Gilbert Bertrand.
This page and edited content is copyright Herb Johnson (c) 2024. Contact Herb at www.retrotechnology.com, an email address is available on that page..