History question - RCA

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I\'d say so.

They are now owned by GE, so how would you even know if they have made any advances since that purchase several years ago?

The RCA name remains on their TV line, but anything else would get the GE moniker.

The CDP1802 and associated COSMAC stuff.

The TK-47 video camera was in place till 1978. That's a pretty long stint. (1953 thru 1978)

Not sure what is in use at football games now, but I don't think it is Sony. What? Hitachi? JVC?

Who knows what cameras brings us nice HD football games these days?

You're not suggesting that I'm wrong about RCA creating this part are you? These things are still manufactured and there are a bunch of them in orbit plugging away right now. It's one of the few radiation hardened micros, pretty cool for the late mid 70's. The register set was cool, kinda like the ARM. The instruction set sucked for the most part though (from a programmer standpoint), it lacked one or two things that it really needed to make it easier to program. I still have the ELF II that I put together in high school (~1978), AFAIK it still works though I haven't powered it up in years (decades?).

I'm taking the naive nominalist position that a company that does not call itself RCA is not RCA.

As of five years ago pretty much all broadcast-quality cameras used Sony CCD and front-end chip sets, regardless of what came after. Dunno if that's still the case, but if it is the light is hitting a Sony diode.

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Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" gives you just what it says.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

The 1802 is a NHISC processor (Never Had an Instruction Set Computer).

I don't think it's rad hardened so much as it's built with such a large geometry that it's too stupid to notice that it's been hit.

Works from 3V to 15V, too, or it did.

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Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" gives you just what it says.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

Absolutely not. Did you see me mention such a thing?

I happen to know that Harris, among other made the part under license for RCA. All I did was post a link to a very informative PDF about the chip.

Jeez, dude! Get off your high horse already!

Look here and see that Intersil makes them and it is touted as being an RCA product/design!

It is mentioned just a few lines down from the start!

Hell, they would make a great company to buy for our firm!

No shit.

Most of them are Intersil manufactured too!

One feature was the capacity for any routine to access any RAM address at any time, and no stack, though one can be "created" under implementation.

Only certain packages, which if you read the pdf, among other links about the chips, you would have noted that it primary purpose was military and space applications, and the plastic packaged version showed up later on.

The way chips were made (read designed, etc.) back then and the way design cycles occur today are two completely different animals.

One proof is how makers, regardless of mil spec, are now RoHSing mil chips, even though mil contractors are exempt, and do not want them that way. It costs us a LOT of money to have chips re-plated as a result.

You should make a USB powered version of it and sell it. It is a great learning tool, and the small instruction set makes it easy to learn about the industry, despite you thinking it is limited.

Chips started at ten transistor elements per die in 1960 with the TI manufactured Fairchild design that went into missiles.

Now, we have 250 million element chips, such as the CELL BE cpu that we will likely see PCs running in the not too distant future.

Hell, Billy may even have to make a CELL port of his OS before it is over. I can still remember an ALPHA version of NT.

He'll have to go where the money is. He would be stupid not to. The Cell will likely cause Intel and AMD to take a hit too. IBM, Toshiba and Sony have a pretty sweet child on their hands. They just need to capitalize on it. Right now, the IBM dual CELL blade is far too expensive for the regular consumer. If IBM had any brains, they would jump back into the PC realm with the cell, and maybe OS/3.

Hehehehee...

GE bought RCA, and the TV line was later sold to Thomson SA.

So RCA is a mere brand name now. The company has been gone for years, and even the GE owned research arm has quietly died out.

Some of the original buildings are now luxury apartments, and one stained glass window with the dog and gramophone still exists, though it is not the original.

I thought that CMOS image arrays had come along enough to beat CCD by now. Not the case?

The mil and space packages are certainly rad hard, and high temp operational as well.

We have an RCA Camcorder (VHS) that's a superb piece of technology, it's perfect, I can't find any fault, in the design. Ken

At least till the rubber parts rot! :-]

Long live Hard Drive based Cameras and DVRs!

Even optical disc burning cameras produce a product that degrades over time, and particularly over temperature!

At least one knows that hard drive data will last decades longer. I'll bet my 10MB Tandon still carries every BIT of data I ever wrote to it!

Well... at least the LAST data I wrote to it anyway. :-]

The TK-76 was somewhat significant in that it was the last successfull made-in-USA minicam

It made beautiful pictures in it's day, but was heavy and hot compared to Sony and Iky cameras.

I think Sony owns pro video these days.

Isn't RCA owned by the French company Thomson?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
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MNOS nonvolatile memory?

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Just checking since that datasheet didn't mention RCA anywhere. I don't know if Intersil is some kind of offspring from RCA/Harris/GE/....

The Intersil datasheet didn't mention RCA anywhere in it.

Almost any 8 or 16 bit processor will allow that.

Well I don't know if that was it's primary purpose, but they put a bunch of them in electronic scales aparently. The RCA Studio II uses them too.

Sounds typical of govt requirements. AFAIK, the entire US is exempt, but that doesn't mean anything.

is a pretty cool site. I can't believe the following the ELF still has. There's an FPGA version of the whole thing somewhere.