MIT Team Working On a $12 Apple (II) Desktop 401
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.
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Dunno, but Linux can run the Apple ][
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openapple/ [sourceforge.net]
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....
Re:Sweet (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.
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!
Re:neat idea (Score:2, Informative)
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.
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!
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. :)
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.
Mod parent up! 40 column text was just fine on TVs (Score:1, Informative)
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]
To me, the funniest part of that video is that they pointed a camcorder at the screen, when they could have just directly captured the Apple II's NTSC video output.
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.
Broken? How? (Score:2, Informative)
Which Apple ][ BASIC are you talking about? I extensively used both Wozniak's Integer BASIC (original ][) and the AppleSoft BASIC supplied on cassette and later incorporated in the AppleSoft ROM board and the Apple ][+, //e, and //c. While there were a small number of bugs in AppleSoft (produced under license from MicroSoft), I don't remember any bugs with Integer BASIC or the Sweet16 virtual machine interpreter included in the original ROMs.
For full disclosure: I am a published author of Apple ][ series software (Nibble magazine).
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.
Re:How to solve world hunger: (Score:3, Informative)
Mod this up!. Thats the "root of all Evil".
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sweet (Score:2, Informative)
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.
This depends completely on what you're displaying on the TV and how.
I used to be an Amiga user (first the A500, then an A1200 with a 68040 card). I've spent numerous hours programming demos and software on Amigas using a TV as the display. During the first few years the TV was an old 14" one and the signal was RF modulated. After that I used a 21" with an RGB SCART signal. On the desktop (Workbench) I used a 60Hz-PAL interlaced screenmode (640x512 with overscan, can't remember the exact size) and when programming a screenmode without interlace (640x256).
The image was clear and fully readable; the interlacing naturally does make it a bit nasty for things like text editing but works just fine for the desktop. No, I did not lose my sight either and didn't have to start using glasses. :) Instead, I learned a sh*tload about programming, both low level and high level, and hardware. This knowledge has helped me a lot in my current job as a PSP programmer. I also browsed the web and read my mail just fine, too.
With proper font, UI, hardware and screenmode choices a CRT TV is certainly a suitable display. Don't let the typical PC TV Out experience fool you. It's been done well ages ago.
(Hint: ditch the interlace when possible. Both fields do not need to be drawn - it's enough to draw only the even ones and you'll get nice true 60FPS framerate as well. Also remember that the TVs are much slower than monitors - 60Hz is enough and won't give you a headache!)