The SuperElf single-board computer was made by Quest Electronics. It was an improvement of the Netronics Elf and Elf II training boards, also based on the RCA 1802, one of the first RISC microprocessors.
The board also featured an 1861 video chip that was closely tied ot the 1802 to generate a video image of 128x64 dots.
Two, four or six 7-segment Led display could be used.
Its hexadecimal keyboard allowed programs to be entered and controlled more efficiently thanks to 8 function keys:
I - Input L - Load mode R - Reset G - Go (run mode) W - Wait (processor clock could be stopped) M - enable Monitor ROM S - Single step P - Protect memory
The main board had connections for a speaker (and a circuit to drive the speaker). Sound was entirely software driven as the hardware simply had a single digital output bit (Q) tied to an LED and also to the speaker.
An optional expansion board could be added, providing serial port (software driven), cassette interface (also software driven), 1 KB ROM monitor, optional 2K tiny basic, 4 KB RAM. 2 S-100 slots where additional static memory or a video board could be used. Along with a Super Monitor, there where two versions of pitman's tiny basic, one that used the 1861 video chip and another that used a 64 characters x16lines s-100 video board.
The cassette's output used the same 'Q' output used for audio on the main board, which meant that you heard all of your data as it was written out to cassette.
The 9 LEDs along the left side of the keypad indicate the state of the 'Q' output, the current operating mode (Load, Reset, Run, Wait) as well as the current state of the CPU (Fetch, Execute, DMA, Interrupt).
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I learned hexadecimal ml programming on this. Part of high school computer course.
Saturday 13rd July 2019
GTBZdell (Canada)
NAME
SuperElf
MANUFACTURER
RCA
ORIGIN
U.S.A.
YEAR
1978
BUILT IN SOFTWARE / GAMES
only machine code entered through the hexadecimal keyboard
CONTROLLERS
24 keys with 8 function keys
CPU
RCA 1802
SPEED
1.79 MHz
CO-PROCESSOR
1861 video chip
RAM
256 bytes
ROM
Unknown
TEXT MODES
2 to 6 7-segment Led display (on all the time)
COLORS
Red!
SOUND
speaker hooked to Q output - shared with Q LED. (Twiddle Q output at a fixed frequency - get that frequency out)
SIZE / WEIGHT
Unknown
I/O PORTS
External power transformer, optional expansion connector
