permacomputing

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Chip8.mdwn (874B)


      1 **CHIP-8** is a [[virtual machine]] created by RCA engineer Joe Weisbecker in 1977 for the COSMAC VIP microcomputer. The Chip-8 language is capable of accessing up to 4KB(4096 bytes) of RAM, from location 0x000 to 0xFFF(0-4095). The first 512 bytes, from 0x000 to 0x1FF, are where the original interpreter was located, and should not be used by programs.
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      3 The original implementation of the Chip-8 language includes 36 different instructions, including math, graphics, and flow control functions.
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      5 All instructions are 2 bytes long and are stored most-significant-byte first. In memory, the first byte of each instruction should be located at an even addresses. If a program includes sprite data, it should be padded so any instructions following it will be properly situated in RAM.
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      7 The computers which originally used the Chip-8 Language had a 16-key hexadecimal keypad.