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MIT Team Working On a $12 Apple (II) Desktop
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Aug 05, 2008 08:54 AM
from the guide-kids-worldwide-to-oregon dept.
from the guide-kids-worldwide-to-oregon dept.
Barence writes "A new project to create a $12 computer is underway at MIT, the same University that spawned the One Laptop Per Child non-profit laptop. The PCs will be loosely based on Apple 2 machines, first unveiled over 30 years ago, and the team are actively recruiting enthusiasts of the retro computer to help develop the new PC." Update: 08/05 14:13 GMT by T : The original story at the Boston Herald has more information, as well as a photo of the team.
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$12 MIT Computer Based On NES, Not Apple II 308 comments
ericatcw writes "The $12 computer that a bunch of designers and grad students are talking up at an MIT conference this month as a potential, cheaper alternative to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) for Third World students is actually a knockoff of the original Nintendo Entertainment System gaming console released in the mid-1980s, reports Computerworld, and confirmed in a comment by the project's spokesman, Derek Lomas. According to Lomas' account and pictures, the Victor-70 is an 8-bit NES clone that accepts its cartridges and is wholly contained in the keyboard. It is also likely to be an unlicensed clone made in China, according to Lomas, though he notes that may not matter patent-wise in the US, due to the length of time that has passed."
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Sweet (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe I can finally play Ultima II on the Apple. Seriously, it doesn't work in any emulator I've tried. Kegs, AppleWin, Mess, nothing wants to recognize when I swap in a player disk.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
two words: virtual apple.
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe I can finally play Ultima II on the Apple
I know you are joking, but let's make this clear - it's not inspired by the Apple in the sense that it's has an 8 bit/1MHz CPU and 4KB of RAM.
It's an 70's stile of personal computer by using the TV as a display screen. I would also assume it uses a small form factor where the case is also a keyboard, and all you need is a DC adapter and the video cable. The hardware would be probably comparable to what you get in an XO: low speed x86 CPU and SSD storage.
As a person who has long used a PC attached to a TV as what it's now called a "Media Center", I can say the text quality on a CRT television is absolutely horrible, totally unusable for browsing or programming. Games, movies, sure. But not anything that would increase the computer literacy of the masses.
Sure, if you get a flat panel TV things look good, but those are not likely to be found in the homes of the people this project targets.
Parent
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Informative)
I can say the text quality on a CRT television is absolutely horrible, totally unusable for browsing or programming.
Maybe unsuitable for browsing, my good sir, but my Timex Sinclair 1000 and I can assure you that a CRT television is perfectly suitable for programming!
Parent
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Interesting)
I gotta agree. I used both a Commodore 64 and a Tandy TRS-80 (can't remember the exact model variation of the Tandy) on television screens and they worked just fine for programming on a TV screen. Still have both of those actually. As a matter of fact a LONG time ago, before the C64, I had a little toy called a VTech Pre Computer 1000. It had a built in single line LCD display with a fully QWERTY keyboard. It supported BASIC and I programmed a lot of stuff on that too. You'd be surprised how much an interested kid can pickup from those old systems.
And as a hobby, I pickup older computers like that when I find them in swap shops/Goodwills/flea markets. I've since added 2 TI-99/4a's, another C64, a C128, a ZX Spectrum, and an Apple IIgs to my collection. The most I paid for any of them was $5 (and the ZX Spectrum was actually given to me - a guy I know in WoW heard about my collection and had it in his attic so he offered to mail it over).
Parent
Re:Sweet (Score:4, Informative)
Apple II can handle 64k of ram and that should be enough for everybody! //e can handle 640k of ram.
The Apple
Apple II cannot be used on a TV set unless you add a TV out (RF) card. It has a composite video out, which at the time, many TV's did not have.
Although Apple II can do colour, many owners used either a green screen or amber monitor. A good colour monitor produced sharp text and images.
Parent
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Informative)
Apple II cannot be used on a TV set unless you add a TV out (RF) card.
No, there were little boxes that would take the composite signal and convert it to an RF signal on channel 2, 3, or (later) 4. Most such boxes were twin lead, but there are other adapters for the coaxial cable ports.
Driving a component, VGA, DVI, or HDMI signal... well it just don't do that.
Hmm, makes me think about hooking up my Apple //c video out into a portable DVD player's video in. I may yet emulate Dr. Heywood Floyd using a //c on a beach in 2010.
Parent
Re:Sweet (Score:4, Interesting)
The RocketChip kicked ass...wish I hadn't sold mine when I upgraded my IIe to a IIGS, as I ended up snagging another IIe at a garage sale a few years later. The IIGS (in a IIe case, upgraded with a kit back in '92 or '93) is currently set up with 4.25 MB RAM, an 8-MHz ZipGS, and an Apple DMA SCSI card with a 4.3-GB Seagate Barracuda (it was cheap when I bought it, and the previous drive was getting flaky) and a 4x CD-ROM drive hanging off of it. It's connected to the LAN through a GatorBox CS, through which it can share files and get a limited amount of Internet access. I converted a microATX-type power supply (one of the really small ones you see in eMachines boxes) to power it; it easily runs fanless at the low load that's placed on it, but if I were to replace the stock power supply today, I'd combine a LittlePower [reactivemicro.com] with a picoPSU [mini-box.com].
Parent
Re:Sweet (Score:4, Informative)
That does actually depend on the TV you're using, as well as the method you're using to connect. I have 3 TV's, and have had the same HTPC hooked up to all 3 of them, using different connection methods. The oldest is a 21" Samsung 16x9 CRT that was bought in 1998, and the TV was connected using RCA. Yes. It was illegible.
The second is a 26" Panasonic GAOO CRT (800x600 resolution), connected via S-Video. On that, the text isn't great, but it *is* legible. The biggest annoyance on that, really, is that when I close the media center, the desktop spans beyond the edges of the screen.
The third is a 42" LG 1080p HDTV, connected via HDMI. On that, there's no problems at all.
YMMV, but the usability for different functions depends an awful lot on the display. :)
Parent
Re:Sweet (Score:4, Interesting)
The third is a 42" LG 1080p HDTV, connected via HDMI. On that, there's no problems at all.
Ah yes, so we just need to get each of the poor children a 1080P hdtv to go with their $12 pc.
Parent
Re:Sweet (Score:4, Informative)
The colors, fonts, and interfaces were designed with ultra-low res displays in mind. While say, 12pt times new roman and arial are not.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/AppleII.jpg [wikimedia.org] Just look at this, that is a what, 6 inch screen? Barely larger than the 5 1/2 inch floppies next to it, in a picture taken from 4 feet away, compressed in a jpeg, and you can still make out all the letters.
Hell, here is a guy browsing the internet on an Apple II When what you want is text, pretty much anything will suffice. http://www.sics.se/contiki/perspective/browsing-the-web-from-an-apple-ii-with-contiki.html [www.sics.se] It's not ideal but CRT monitor/tvs were made better back then, they had finer controls and were just sharper, I used some old commodore monitors for years for video projects, probably the sharpest non-hd TV you can get that doesn't run you in the thousands, that and they are very stackable so you can have a tower of monitors.
Parent
Funkay... (Score:5, Funny)
Each one comes with a free leisure suit.
Re:Funkay... (Score:4, Funny)
Larry will be pleased
Parent
How to solve world hunger: (Score:5, Funny)
1) Give children in third world countries old computers
2) Get children addicted to Oregon Trail
3) Watch children forego sex, and therefore reproduction, in favor of Number Munchers
4) Profit!
It's bullet-proof!
Re:How to solve world hunger: (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:How to solve world hunger: (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:How to solve world hunger: (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, if you could get children to forgo sex in many of these third world countries, a large number of their biggest issues would be solved.
Parent
Re:How to solve world hunger: (Score:5, Insightful)
If you could get the damned Catholic Church to quit opposing contraception, that'd help quite a bit as well.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Mod this up!. Thats the "root of all Evil".
Re: (Score:3)
There, fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Nah, you get them to play Zork, so at least they get to know what a Grue is :)
Not much details... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not much details... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesnt binary compatibility depend on the OS, which id guess to be BSD/linux.
Based on appel II is much more likely to mean in terms of architecture & hardware
Re:Not much details... (Score:5, Informative)
Doesnt binary compatibility depend on the OS, which id guess to be BSD/linux.
Based on appel II is much more likely to mean in terms of architecture & hardware
I can tell that you have never used a computer from the era of the Apple ][.
These beasts did definitely not run anything like BSD or Linux.
When you programmed them, you did it in BASIC, or programmed in assembly, accessing the hardware directly without any form of operating system.
You could use calls to a few functions in Eprom, but CP/M was the best you could get as an OS, and then you needed the plug-in card with a real Z80 chip on it!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
System 7.5.3? On a ][e clone?
ARE
YOU
OUT
OF
YOUR
FUCKING
MIND?
skip to the end, please (Score:5, Insightful)
can we just mark down a pile of old engineering calculators and call it a day? I remember watching some smarty-pants play Mario on his calculator during enviromental engineering classes lo these many years ago.
or cell phones, for gods' sake, my cell phone has a 314MHz processor in it, I played duke nukem 3D and watched streaming video on PCs that were slower, this cannot be that difficult.
figure it out, people and stop cluttering up /. with these endless utopian woolgathering snipehunts; please, and thank you.
Re:skip to the end, please (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously... don't we toss thousands of cellphones a day-- each more powerful than an Apple ][, into landfills?
Parent
Re:skip to the end, please (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
loosely based on the Apple ][? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not many details.
6502? Hang a keyboard on a gameboy?
Flash instead of cassette tape, to be sure.
Sixteen bit addresses?
6809 would give it enough horsepower to actually run an early version of unix, but then you couldn't get the low-low power out of programmable logic that you can out of hard-wired 6502 cores. And you'd still have that problem of virtual addressing facing any kid with enough ambition to try to (re)program it.
Freescales m-core might be interesting as a CPU, but then they would potentially collide with the goals of OLPC.
I'm rambling, but this touches a kind of long-term fantasy of mine -- basically, put the equivalent of a Radio Shack Color Computer (but with something better than MSBASIC) in every kid's pocket.
Regression (Score:5, Funny)
If we follow the pattern to its natural conclusion, we'll have $6.00 Altair 8800's, then $3.00 PDP-8's, then $1.50 UNIVAC's, then 75 cent ENIACS, then 3 Babbage Difference Engines for a nickel, and finally a Jacquard loom that you couldn't give away.
Re:Regression (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Why not base it on the C64DTV chip instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's already in production, and is a fully functioning C64 on a chip.
Just sayin' (and prolly igniting another Apple/Commodore war. :-)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not entirely convinced the project is supposed to actually make sense.
Like a lot of MIT hacks, this strikes me as more of a "because we can" than a "because we should".
Like a Warcart.
Breaking News: Team at MIT making a FREE computer (Score:5, Funny)
Is it really cheaper? (Score:4, Insightful)
Would it really be that much cheaper to make 1980s-vintage computers? I mean, once the design work is done, are the price differences between fabbing a 6502-type CPU and an ARM or x86 that great? I thought that the price advantage of using mass-market components would outweigh any savings made by using primitive technologies.
Games! (Score:3, Funny)
Each one comes preloaded with "Little Brick Out" and "Lemonade Stand".
Great until... (Score:5, Funny)
This will be great until they sell out and try to put Windows XP on it.
No mention of India $10 laptop? (Score:3, Informative)
Because that might be close it...in TFA they even mention "consoles with a keyboard" that are apparently popular in India as their starting point (adding to them network functionality).
BTW, the TFA is wrong about one detail - those consoles aren't based on Apple II, they're NES clones (still...the same CPU as in Apple II)
So I guess if you want to see what their machine will be capable of, check Contiki ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contiki [wikipedia.org] ) on C-64 with ethernet adapter.
Re:neat idea (Score:5, Informative)
4Mhz and 64k RAM? Don't be silly, you could get a 40 Mhz and 512k RAM along with some eeprom for less than $2 in a micro controller.
I am not sure how they are going to get the Monitor and keyboard so cheaply though....
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Dunno, but Linux can run the Apple ][
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openapple/ [sourceforge.net]
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Finally... a modding score for bad jokes....
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree.
My kid is into his second year of ICT at his secondary school (like High school for you American types), and I found to my horror that neither he, nor any of his friends who take that class even know what a sub folder is. Text files? A mystery, CLI? No idea...
What they do know is how to use Word, Powerpoint and (at a push) Excel. I hear they now use Dreamweaver instead of Frontpage. I see this as barely an improvement.
I think kids should spend a little time using computers that are as functional as
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
[members of] the team are actively recruiting...
the team is actively recruiting....
No, not in British English. Substitute "the team" with "they", and it makes sense.
Re:Clustering C64 drives (Score:5, Interesting)
The 1541 floppy drive (the floppy drive used with the C64) had its own processor and memory. A popular (and fun) "trick" was to write code that would load into the 1541's memory and run on its processor, and have it talk to the C64. Essentially, a two-processor "cluster" back in the 1980's.
The C64 was a wonderful "playground" for experimentation.
Parent
Re:Clustering C64 drives (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep I remeber that was one of the things I hated about PCs. :)
On my little C64 with two drives I could start it formatting a disk and the go do something else. Or I could format two disks at once.
On the very expensive PCs you had to wait for the drive to format the floppy!
Man they sucked.
Then when I got my Amiga I was helping a local BBS test Zmodem. I downloaded a GIF and then the sysop asked me if it downloaded. I told him yes and to wait just a sec while I checked. He jumped right back and told me that I didn't have to log off and check it right now. I could wait until I was done on the BBS:) He was so confused when I told him that I didn't have to log off to check a GIF
Man how did PCs ever win....
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I had an Amiga, but I remember the PC's had a shell to DOS option in QModem and Procom to run those DOS based GIF reader programs. It was not true multitasking like the Amiga had, but it worked.
The Amiga lost due to marketing, it was better than a Macintosh at half the Macintosh price, plus full color which a Mac couldn't do until the Macintosh II series came out. By that time the PC had VGA as well. Amigas never really tried to innovate beyond what PCs and Macs could do, but did have the microkernel advant
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because by the time this comes out, $12 worth of Chinese components will cost $75.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The original ][ had Steve Wozniak's BASIC which was limited but very well coded. It had a minor bug that produced the wrong error message in certain circumstances, not bad for being HAND-ASSEMBLED.
Then they ditched it for that pile known as Applesoft, the mutant brother of the Commodore BASIC, which like the Commodore BASIC was written at M$. It was a more powerful BASIC, sure, but it was considered bloated (10K vs. 6K) and sluggish, and it had a number of bugs. Sound familiar?
-uso.
Software longa, hardware brevis... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because there's an enormous pool of software for the Apple II - a pool of free software, not just commercial software, and free educational software to boot. And it's designed to work well with a standard TV set as the display.
The capabilities of the hardware are a minor issue. None of the alternatives you list are all that much better, and none of them have the huge pool of free and abandoned software. Computers aren't about hardware excellence, or we'd be using Amiga-derived computers now instead of IBM-PC clones. Computers aren't about processors, or the x86 would have died a well deserved death in the '80s. Computers are about running software. You get a computer that runs the software you want to run, and for an educational platform that has to hook up to a TV, the Apple II is probably the best choice.
I would hope that they used the 65C816 instead of the 6502. It's not a great CPU, but it would let them emulate anything up to the Apple IIGS, which gives them more software to choose from.
Because it's all about the software.
Parent