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.
Not much details... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's great (Score:1, Insightful)
I've always advocated that kids should be introduced to programming on the classic 8-bit machines. These systems, especially on the assembly language level, expose how computers work better than any modern computer which can only be programmed through layers of APIs. The modern equivalent to these computers are the Atmel AVR and Microchip PIC microcontrollers, but they lack the instant gratification because they don't come with "shiny" peripheral options. If this project can recreate Apple II or Commodore 64 environments at the price of a movie ticket, it should be the ideal learning environment.
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:Not much details... (Score:5, Insightful)
they need to cut the price. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:That's great (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 the ones we used as kids (I'm from the Apple ][ Era myself), just so they can understand that a computer != a windows machine, and that there's more to it then the desktop and shortcuts. With the right teaching plan it would probably be a lot of fun.
I'm not proposing we throw out the modern PC, just that is be part of the process of learning about the computing subject, not the main focus.
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?
Re:Why not base it on the C64DTV chip instead? (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.
Re:grammar, please.... (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: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.
Re:Something is wrong with /. article title (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because by the time this comes out, $12 worth of Chinese components will cost $75.
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.
Re:skip to the end, please (Score:4, Insightful)
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....
skip reinventing the wheel (Score:2, Insightful)
Just use cellphones and have a way to use a real keyboard and screen at home so it doesn't suck to type or see anything for extended periods. Developing nations are leapfrogging the wired data infrastructure in favor of going straight to wireless, so there's your web connectivity already. Concentrate on making applications that work off of low end, low powered cellphones and can immediately see and make use of the difference between the built in keyboard and tiny screen and then the normal sized screen and keyboard. That exists now, just make it better and cheaper.
Re:neat idea (Score:2, Insightful)
"...plug directly into a standard television."
*What* 'standard'?
NTSC? PAL? SECAM? PAL-M? SECAM-M? MESCAM? The 20-something variations thereof? Or one of the new digital/HD/etc. 'standards'?
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.
Re:How to solve world hunger: (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course a $0.12 bullet to the head of each child would solve the overpopulation problem even faster.
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.
Cheap and Simple Implementations (Score:3, Insightful)
They probably are not planning to build the computer exactly the same way it was done in the 1980's. They are probably planning to copy just a few stylistic items.
For instance, a modern micro-controller CPU would integrate almost the entire Apple II motherboard onto one chip, including the RAM, ROM, and peripherals. You can use the cheap hack (like the Apple II did) to generate composite video signals from just a few TTL output pins. If you pick the right microcontroller, DMA can be used to automatically output the video bitstream, and a built in counter timer can be used to generate the video clock. Additionally, most microcontrollers have I/O pins designed for keyboard scanning built into them. The result is one chip and a few miscellaneous components accomplishes everything on the motherboard of the original Apple II.
Unfortunately, you will still need a case, power supply, and keyboard. The keyboard could be the most expensive part of the design.
The rough approach of creating a bootable computer from a microcontroller is in widespread use. When I start a new micro-controller design, I frequently program a small boot monitor into the early versions of the CPU. This allows me to download new programs and manually test the on-board peripherals. Communication is done via RS-232 to a local PC. Occasionally, the same approach is used in Windows and Linux when doing kernel debugging from a remote PC. There is nothing to stop someone from programming a microcontroller in a higher level language like BASIC. Parallax has built a product around it, namely the BASIC Stamp. [parallax.com] In practice, if you already have an in-circuit programmable microcontroller attached to a PC, then it is often easier to program on the PC and transfer a compiled C program as opposed to hacking with BASIC and assembly. However, this varies from application to application, with what the designers preferences are, and how old-school and hard-core of a hardware hacker that you are dealing with.
Re:Sweet (Score:3, Insightful)
That's an idiotic assertion to make.
Analog TV monitors are interlaced, which causes flicker with fine vertical details. HOWEVER, that is directly proportional to the size of the font you are using. You need about a 24-pt font to be readable, but that is still far more dense than the 80x24 displays of a terminal.
Certainly, a TV monitor compares poorly to even a 640x480 monitor, but it compares VERY favorably to a TTY, monochrome terminals, etc. In addition, numerous methods of flicker reduction are possible to eliminate the problem, even with finer fonts, at the expense of lower resolution and therefore blurring. NVidia's "TV Flicker Filter" setting does exactly that.
It's not like you even need a computer hooked up to a TV to know this. Billions of people around the world watch DVDs every day, while reading the text subtitles on their "totally unusable" TVs.
Re:Is it really cheaper? (Score:3, Insightful)
Many very "primitive technologies" continue to be "mass-market components," even today.
When a CPU ceases to be fast enough to compete with modern CPUs... it becomes a "controller"... You probably have several "primitive" CPUs in your current computer, as controller chips for your NIC, sound card, etc.
Z-80s continue to sell very well. 6502 microcontrollers are still being produced to handle the limited demands of VCRs, T-1000 production, girder Bending Units, and the like.
The Pope and Population (Score:3, Insightful)
Since most Catholics ignore "official teachings" and use contraception, that's kind of beside the point. In Italy, where the Church arguably has more influence than any other country, the fertility rate (average number of births per woman) is 1.3, way below the "steady-state" rate of 2.1. Similar figures apply to other western European countries.
The main predictor of family size is not religion but wealth. Poor people have big families, rich people don't, for a variety of reasons. Yes, there are lots of well-known and well-off Catholic and Mormon families with umpteen kids, but most population pressure comes from social groups where poverty is endemic.
Re:Sweet (Score:3, Insightful)