The RCA Studio 2 Emulator Home Page

Written by Paul Robson (autismuk@classicgaming.com)
Last updated 8th November 2000.

See What's New at this Website and What's coming to this website

A picture of the Studio 2 Introduction

What is an RCA Studio 2, you may ask ? Well, this picture here is what it looks like in reality (photos courtesy ClassicGaming). It is the second ever video games machine produced that used cartridge programs, the first being the Fairchild Channel F (discounting the original Magnavox Odyssey). It looks a little grubby, (the yellowy brown case is a poor choice of colour, the European and Austalian ones look much nicer) but inside, it is actually very well made, all nicely soldered in, with no last minute wires strewn everywhere.

So what does this machine offer to the hungry videogame punter of 1976 ?

Well, there are five built in games, a 64 x 32 pixel monochrome display, a single channel beeper, a reset key, a LED so you know it is switched on and a slot for the additional cartridges. There were 9 of these. It is powered by an RCA (now Intersil) 1802 Microprocessor, and has 2k of built in ROM, and 512 bytes of RAM.

At the moment about half of the cartridges have been transferred. I have built and tested a cartridge reader for other ones. If you've managed to successfully transfer one  please let me have a copy !

Emulator Downloads

There are two emulator types. The first one, the original one has a debugger and is written in assembler. The second one, which is the one still being developed, does not have a debugger and is written in 'C'. Anyone volunteer to write a Linux driver ?

Game Downloads

Development and Technical Information

Visit my links page.  Read Jack Spencer Jr's RCA Studio 2 FAQ

The following people have provided invaluable assistance

John Dondzila (pcjohn@monmouth.com). He provided the RCA Studio 2, and postage, so that I could "rip" the ROMs, so without him none of this would have happened. He has a lot of stuff on vintage machines, and makes multi-game cartridges which are shipped worldwide. Visit his page at http://www.classicgamecreations.com/

Jack Spencer Jr (eeville@dreamscape.com). He wrote the original Studio 2 FAQ, and inspired the emulator project.... just got stuck due to the lack of ROM images available. He has an RCA Studio 2 information page at http://www.geocities.com/kaimaret/RCAmain.html, and his FAQ is regularly posted on alt.games.video.classic

Richard Smedley (www.vintagegame.com). For providing scans of the RCA Studio 2 Manual which I cut down for the emulator instructions.

William Cassidy (WilliamC@exchange.gamespy.com). Hosting, and some suggestions on the HTML.

Frank Palozzolo. For uploading the datasheet for the CDP1831 so I could make some corrections.

Ralph Johnson. For eventually getting me the Studio 2 and cartridges.

If you want to mail me with questions, comments, bugs, feedback or you are kind enough to loan me a cartridge to copy, or provide a downloaded image, please contact me at autismuk@classicgaming.com.
Or, feel free to leave messages in the Guestbook.

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