CompuMate
Home computer peripheral
The CompuMate SV010 was a home computer peripheral manufactured by Spectravideo International for the Atari 2600 home video game console. It was released on 6 January 1983 at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In Germany, the CompuMate was marketed by Quelle, a catalogue company, as the Universum Heimcomputer. In Brazil (circa 1985), at least two clones of CompuMate were made: the Dactar-Comp by Milmar Electronics, and the CompuGame.
01Hardware
The ComputeMate consists of a membrane keyboard, output interfaces, and read-only internal storage. It connects to the console's module slot and to both controller ports. The user could optionally place the ComputeMate on top of the console, although not when used with the Atari 2600 Jr. model.
The CompuMate has a 3.5-mm phone connector in order to connect a Compact Cassette unit for non-volatile data storage. Its read-only memory is preinstalled with three computer programs.
02Software
The CompuMate has three simple computer programs in its internal read-only memory:
- Magic Easel, a drawing and animation program with a 40×40-pixel canvas and 10 selectable colors. It can animate up to nine frames in a repeating loop. It has two demonstration pictures: a world map and a snowman.
- Music Composer, a software synthesizer with four demonstration songs: "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", "Long, Long Ago", "Jingle Bells", and "My Bonnie".
- BASIC editor and interpreter
Spectravideo only published two programs for the CompuMate on Compact Cassette, PictureMate (1983) and SongMate (1983).
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “CompuMate”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Atari 2600 Compumate.jpg by Superandi73 at de.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
- UNIVERSUM Computertastatur fuer Atari Videospiel 2600 Seite rechts.jpg by Laeser Ralf, CC BY-SA 3.0
- UNIVERSUM Computertastatur fuer Atari Videospiel 2600 Frontansicht.jpg by Laeser Ralf, CC BY-SA 3.0
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