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Unknown RCA keyboard

I had one just like it a while back. Someone also posted the same question over the winter. It is for a game console RCA tried to market iirc. Mine sold for $100.00 on ebay. It might be worth more.
 
COSMAC Keyboard

COSMAC Keyboard

That's an RCA COSMAC keyboard. Ok, well the COSMAC was really the RCA CDP1802 processor, but this keyboard was an accessory for one of the more sophisticated COSMAC systems (it plugged into an interface card that plugged into a microboard card case / backplane).

It's worth a lot more than one euro.

Lou

Totally unrelated, but I am still amazed that Intersil still makes and sells new CDP1802 processors. These are the processors that run the famous Voyager satellites - farthest man-made objects from earth. These may be some of the oldest microprocessors still in service doing the job they were originally bought for (the ones running the Voyager satellites.) If there's any intelligent life out there, they'll find RCA microprocessors before they come across something from Intel.
 
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For their time, the 1802s were one of the lowest-power fully-static CMOS microprocessors (the other one that comes to mind is the Inmos IM6100). That alone made them valuable in applications that involved battery power, such as telemetry. You could run the clock almost down to DC if you weren't in a hurry.

Another aspect was that they had 16 8-bit general-purpose registers. You could write an application for an embedded system that required no RAM at all.

Programming, on the other hand, was almost painful. The instruction set is very primitive.
 
Lou - N2MIY said:
I am amazed that Intersil still makes and sells new CDP1802 processors.
Click to expand...
Well, it turns out some company still makes and sells those membrane keyboards too, both ASCII and PC/AT interfaces:

http://www.matric.com/resources/Keyboard_brochure.pdf

SunDown's keyboard arrived yesterday, thanks. After searching the Internet, it seems that exact type of keyboard membrane has been used in a number of applications, from a simple ASCII keyboard to terminals and more so one should not get fooled from a picture of the keyboard itself to determine what it is and its possible value.:)
 
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