December Days 2021 #3: The Playing Card Company's Family Computer

[Welcome to December Days, where I natter on about things organized around a theme (sometimes very loosely), one a day, for 31 days. This year, we're taking a look back at some touchpoints along the way of my journey with computing and computing devices.]

• CPU: Ricoh 2A03, an 8-bit microprocessor containing a second source MOS Technology 6502 core, 1.79 MHz.


• RAM: 2 KB of onboard work RAM. Cartridges may contain expanded RAM to increase this amount, from 8 KB to 1 MB.


• Video Processor: Custom-made Picture Processing Unit (PPU) developed by Ricoh. 2 KB of video RAM, 256 bytes of on-die "object attribute memory" (OAM) to store the positions, colors, and tile indices of up to 64 sprites on the screen, and 28 bytes of on-die palette RAM to allow selection of background and sprite colors. Standard display resolution is 256 horizontal pixels by 240 vertical pixels.


• Video output: Composite video through RCA connectors in addition to a real frequency (RF) modulator.


• Sound: Five sound channels, two of which are pulse channels with 4 pulse width settings, one is a triangle wave generator, another is a noise generator (often used for percussion), and the fifth one plays low-quality digital samples.


• Input: Two custom seven-pin ports, expandable to four ports with accessories, able to accept gamepads and joysticks (four directions, two buttons marked A and B, and two buttons marked Select and Start), some with turbo button pressing functions, light gun (reflective mirror with trigger, position calculated by flashing the screen bright white and reading the reflection in the mirror), floor pad with six buttons for each side, and Robotic Operating Buddy.

( The Nintendo Entertainment System )