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MIT Team Working On a $12 Apple (II) Desktop
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.
It's already in production, and is a fully functioning C64 on a chip.
Just sayin' (and prolly igniting another Apple/Commodore war. :-)
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.
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.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
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 $5 (and the ZX Spectrum was actually given to me - a guy I know in WoW heard about my collection and had it in his attic so he offered to mail it over).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
The original ][ had Steve Wozniak's BASIC which was limited but very well coded. It had a minor bug that produced the wrong error message in certain circumstances, not bad for being HAND-ASSEMBLED.
Then they ditched it for that pile known as Applesoft, the mutant brother of the Commodore BASIC, which like the Commodore BASIC was written at M$. 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.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
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 with a picoPSU.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.