The Fairchild Channel F is a game console released by Fairchild Semiconductor in August 1976 at the retail price of $ 169. 95.

By 1977, the Fairchild Channel F had sold 250, 000 units and was second-place behind the VCS.

The Channel F electronics were designed by Jerry Lawson using the Fairchild F8 CPU, the first public outing of this processor.

Ken Uston reviewed 32 games in his book Ken Uston's Guide to Buying and Beating the Home Video Games in 1982, and rated some of the Channel F's titles highly ; of these, Alien Invasion and Video Whizball were considered by Uston to be " the finest adult cartridges currently available for the Fairchild Channel F System.

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At the time of the U. S crash, there were numerous consoles on the market, including the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200, the Bally Astrocade, the ColecoVision, the Coleco Gemini ( a 2600 clone ), the Emerson Arcadia 2001, the Fairchild Channel F System II, the Magnavox Odyssey < sup > 2 </ sup >, the Mattel Intellivision ( and its just-released update with several peripherals, the Intellivision II ), the Sears Tele-Games systems ( which included both 2600 and Intellivision clones ), the Tandyvision ( an Intellivision clone for Radio Shack ), and the Vectrex.

In 1976, the company released the first video game system to use ROM cartridges, the Fairchild Video Entertainment System ( or VES ) later renamed Channel F, using the F8 microprocessor.

Several cartridges for the Fairchild Channel F include previously unknown Easter eggs, programmed by Michael Glass and Brad Reid-Selth, that are believed to predate Robinett's work.

* The Fairchild Channel F, an early video game console

* August – Fairchild Semiconductor releases the Video Entertainment System ( later known as the Channel F ), the first cartridge-based video game console.

The F8 was used in the Fairchild Channel F Video Entertainment System in 1976 and in the VideoBrain Computer system in 1977.

Unfortunately by the time the Game Brain was finished, dedicated consoles were becoming obsolete against consoles with programmable ROMs, such as the already released Fairchild Channel F, the RCA Studio 2, and Atari's own 2600.

By the end of the 1970s, cartridge-based systems, beginning with the Fairchild Channel F, had risen to prominence during the second generation of consoles due to the success of the Atari 2600, though stand-alone systems such as Coleco's Mini-Arcade series continued to have a smaller presence in the home market up until the North American video game crash of 1983.

* Fast ( F ) and Advanced-Schottky ( AS ) variants of LS from Fairchild and TI, respectively, circa 1985, with " Miller-killer " circuits to speed up the low-to-high transition.

Other buildings on the Terrazzo include Vandenberg Hall and Sijan Hall, the two dormitories ; Mitchell Hall, the cadet dining facility ; and Fairchild Hall, the main academic building, which houses academic classrooms, laboratories, research facilities, faculty offices and the Robert F. McDermott Library.

* Register of Deeds: Mark F. Fairchild

* The Silicon Gate Technology, developed at Fairchild in 1968 by F. Faggin et al., was presented at the IDEM in Washington DC, in Oct. 1968.

The west force, under Major Green, consisted of the 21st Infantry under Major Edwin Mason ; two companies of the Oregon militia under General John E. Ross ; 1st Cavalry, Troop F, under Captain David Perry ; a company of California volunteers under Captain John O. Fairchild, and one section of two 12 pounder ( 5 kg ) mountain howitzers under 2nd Lieutenant W. H. Miller.

The Palette ( computing ) | palette of the Channel F The graphics are quite basic by modern standards.

The Channel F is only able to use one plane of graphics and one of four background colors per line, only three plot colors to choose from ( red, green and blue ) that turned into white if the background is set to black.

It was marketed by Zircon as " Channel F Jet-Stick " in a letter sent out to registered owners before Christmas 1982.

" The games on the whole, however, rated last on his survey of over 200 games for the Atari, Intellivision, Astrocade and Odyssey consoles, and contemporary games were rated " Average " with future Channel F games rated " below average ".

Uston rated almost one half of the Channel F games as " high in interest " and called that " an impressive proportion " and further noted that " Some of the Channel F cartridges are timeless ; no matter what technological developments occur, they will continue to be of interest.

" His overall conclusion was that the games " serve a limited, but useful, purpose " and that the " strength of the Channel F offering is in its excellent educational line for children.

The biggest effect of the Channel F in the market was to spur Atari into releasing and improving their next-generation console which was then in development.

Then codenamed " Stella ," the machine was also set to utilize cartridges ; after seeing the Channel F, Atari realized they needed to release it before the market was flooded with cartridge-based machines.

The Channel F System II

Channel F system II promotional poster

Some time in 1979, Zircon International bought the rights to the Channel F and released the re-designed console as the Channel F System II to compete with the Atari's VCS.

Like many other discontinued consoles, the Channel F lives on through homebrew.

For example, a 2009 version of Pac-Man was developed and distributed for the Channel F.

PCB Scan of the Grandstand Video Entertainment Computer ( UK Channel F II variant ).