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$12 MIT Computer Based On NES, Not Apple II
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."
In addition, the console in a keyboard comes with a fully illustrated manual explaining the proper method of blowing into the cartridges in order to make them function properly...
Just another ignorant American.
Now we can teach children in developing countries the importance of gold coins, magic mushrooms and floating stars.
You play tetris on victor 70
Now a whole new generation of kids can have great enjoyment from the Nintendo. It's kind of like a console hand-me down of sorts lol.
According to the article it is a knock-off device that one of the students found in India on the streets for $12. Adding the Internet access and other necessary componenets most likely will not hike up the price over the OLPC.
If someone finds the company that makes those devices, I want to buy in. This could take off.
I have to question the usefulness of a 8 bit system in terms of running modern software, as well as being a useful as a whole. I mean does anyone know a modern linux distro that runs on a 8 bit processor?
Blowing can actually damage edge connectors of NES Game Paks and other PCBs by depositing humidity, which attracts more dust and more corrosion. I've made an illustrated guide to cleaning cartridges.
It costs less than my abacus!
BIOS error, keypad not detected.
Press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, A, B, A, B, Start to continue.
Not sure why MIT needs to get involved in anything here. This $12.50 computer is currently produced, and sold on the street in India *now*. So R&D, manufacturing, distribution and marketing is done and working.
Computer includes word processor, games, a gun for gaming, as well as BASIC.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
It appears that this is essentially the same setup as those dodgy Chinese handhelds loaded with a bunch of hacked and remixed NES ROMs.
So why didn't anyone else think of this before? It's perfect; put together this ultra-cheap but still highly programmable hardware with some efficiently-designed educational software, and you've got something that can, despite having a tiny fraction of the OLPC's specs, still make a big, positive impact on kids in the developing world.
If this project is managed right, it could end up doing the OLPC's mission for it and then some.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Step 1: Rip off 20 year old patented technology
Step 2: Cram into smaller container
Step 3: Get MIT guys to give you free press
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit
I mean, what's the actual deal here? Some manufacturer in China is producing a miniaturized clone of the Nintendo skipping out on the licensing fees so they can get it to market in the $12 range, MIT students/alumni are smiling at it around a table. So what exactly is MIT doing?
Is it suddenly dawning on them that if you strip all of the patent protection and licensing from a project that a $100+ chunk of electronics is only $12 worth of components, shipping and handling, and Chinese labor?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
If they replaced the massive NES slot with an SD card slot. Also, think how much porn, I mean business applications, you could fit on one SD card.
We all know that's you really meant, no need to deny.
You just got troll'd!
Does anyone have some links to programming tools for the Victor-70? A BASIC interpreter was mentioned in one of the articles. I know I should STFW, but I'm at work and /. has already degraded my productivity enough.
The Apple IIe had some awesome Pac Man and Space Invaders clones that were decidedly illegal because they mimicked the arcade machines you put quarters in perfectly.
For one thing, companies like Atarisoft published plenty of authorized ports of arcade games on Apple II and other 8-bit platforms. For another, how perfectly? Not every aspect is copyrightable.
Does anyone have some links to programming tools for the Victor-70?
If it's as similar to the Famicom as people make it out to be, this web site might be useful.
patents may expire in 20 years, but copyrights don't.
i'm sure the NES had some sort of firmware on the console that's still covered by copyrights. this would make the work a little harder. the creators of this thingie would have to first develop their own firmware, right ?
What ? Me, worry ?
Crap, I saw the laptop mentioned (http://revolv.in/2008/02/15-laptop-seen-in-mumbai.html) in a small rural market in Mexico next to a bunch of pirated DVDs. Thought that due to the location and price (I think it was 30 dollars) that it had to be a gimic like a screen that was nothing but a sticker. If I would have know that something like this exists I would have checked it out more.
i'm sure the NES had some sort of firmware on the console that's still covered by copyrights.
Citation needed. The only copyrighted ROM inside an NES console that anyone on nesdev.com knows about is the ROM in the CIC lockout chip, and the Famicom didn't even have that.
The current version can't connect to the internet. The MIT students are trying to see if they can get networking on it without going past the $12 price point.
The thing hasn't been updated in a long time so their goal is to see if there's better tech that can be put together for the same price.
Work Safe Porn
Why would you consider this a "ripoff"? Patents are granted for 20 years, with the express intention that after that period, the invention can be freely used by others.
Because it isn't just the patents. Looking at the Picasa album, I see that the computer appears to be bundled with a multicart containing unauthorized copies of several copyrighted Nintendo games. I'd bet it even has proprietary Tetris instead of GPL'd Tetramino.
... stamping on turtles and jumping into drainpipes.
I'm not certain, but I think their plan is:
1) Select the lowest cost computer you can find.
2) Write educational software for it.
3) market the hardware+software solution to schools and poor families in developing countries.
4) Profit! but while making the world a better place too.
Well, strictly speaking, by definition a $12 game console is a $12 computer as well.
It may be all very ho-hum for you with your GHz PC and internet connection, but I think it's interesting. It has :
- Keyboard (important step up from the traditional game console of old).
- Known / Familiar hardware, being a NES clone.
- TV-out, which means that any low-income family that has a TV, can get a relatively cheap computer.
Combine that with a decent software cartridge with :
- Word processor
- Spreadsheet
- Good kids educational software
- BASIC (or Pascal,if you're feeling sadistic. The logical steps/sequence in programming apply across all programming languages.)
- A few MB of flash ram for storage of docs,etc
- File manager / DOS of some sort.
- A port or two would be nice for a printer/modem, but it's probably pushing it.
annnnnd with all that you're suddenly on par with the IBM PC-XT of 25 years ago, and it helped revolutionise personal/business computers then.
So, seeing that the hardware's done, all MIT has to do is come up with a NES cartridge with decent software. Seems doable.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Totally a dumb idea as they are trying it. But it could be done and be practical.
1. Forget putting it into a keyboard. Standalone keyboards are such a commodity they are dirt cheap and by leaving it external the possibility of different layouts becomes much easier since a small outfit doesn't have to make a gadget in a dozen flavors. Plus it lets you leave out the keyboard/mouse and let people scrounge or buy a bulk lot locally.
2. Forget 8-bit. Go just a bit higher up the food chain. Admit up front that even if you avoid it on 1.0 you need a future upgrade path to a web browser and it would be best if that didn't mean tossing the entire platform and software base. Today's word is ARM.
3. Build a tiny little box with several USB ports, an S-Video (easy to adapt to composite) port, audio i/o, possibly a VGA port and depending on pricing a pair of PS/2 ports. (If the cost of adding the ports is less than the cost of two more USB + price diff on keyboard/mouse.)
4. Develop a SIMPLE Operating System for it. Linux is way too big for the sort of cheap ARM chips available today. Most modern BSDs are also probably too big. Think much smaller. UNIX used to run on small machines though so it could be POSIXish.
5. USB drives would be the software delivery method. When writing software for a machine with at best a megabyte of RAM and 2D TV graphics you can fit a boatload of software on a single 256MB flash drive.
6. Ship them with a software development environment. The oldskool machines always had BASIC available and it spawned a generation of users who, if not outright developers could at least read code and make small changes. A modern BASIC wouldn't be the worst thing to ship and there are good Free implementations available. I'm afraid a fully self hosted development environment probably isn't possible on such a limited platform but ship the cross compiler on a CD in the box or make it generally available for download.
Democrat delenda est
Linux is way too big for the sort of cheap ARM chips available today.
GNU/Linux is probably too big, but that doesn't mean Linux is. DSLinux and other uClinux distributions run on ARM CPUs.
A modern BASIC wouldn't be the worst thing to ship and there are good Free implementations available. I'm afraid a fully self hosted development environment probably isn't possible on such a limited platform
Think again. There are BASIC compilers that run on a Commodore 64.
I haven't heard of this before. Sounds interesting, a 3rd party clone to run my old NES cartridges. I searched for "Victor-70" and got some guy's myspace page - I'm guessing even if he's offering NES games, I don't want anything of it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I actually have one of these...I bought a Famiclone when in the Philippines earlier this year. It was housed in what looked like a PC keyboard (which worked) and came with a Famicom game slot in the top, two game pads, a light gun and a mouse. The included game cartridge had a few ripped off NES games as well as a BASIC compiler and a word processing program (which seems useless considering the fact there is no way to print) and some educational stuff that used the mouse. It was called the "HUG New Educational Computer 2003" and comes in a box with an attractive Asian model holding it. The actual unit is made from the cheapest, most brittle plastic imaginable, but it works. I paid the peso equivalent of $10. I left the lightgun in the Philippines though because it was cheap plastic it looked identical to an Uzi, and I didn't want anything like that in my luggage.
The paradox here is that the Famicom (NES) was so ahead of its time there was already in early 1985 a Basic language program sold by Nintendo in Japan, ãfããfYãfãf¼ãf(TM)ãf¼ããffãï¼ï¼" (Family Basic V3). So it was in a way a computer well before MIT students thought this up.
Really?
How much time do you think anyone can or will sit in a computer lab that they are sharing with several dozen other students?
How much time do you think that someone can spend sitting in front of a video monitor at home?
The immersed, "deep" learning occurs when one has the luxury of forgetting where the time went. In a resource-strapped school in a developing country, that's not the computer lab.
There are those of us who learned to program in more primitive environments than these - and we learned to program a little "closer to the metal."
All you really need is an 8-bit system that supports VT220 and Telnet. then you share a fat Linux box remotely with 100 other people.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
> I am assuming you have never heard of the linux distros that fit on a floppy?
My first exposure to Linux was when you downloaded a boot/root floppy set from a BBS.
And yes I actually ran Linux on a 386SX-16 with 5MB RAM. It wasn't pretty. Now scale down to a machine that MIGHT have 1MB of memory but would probably have 256K or 512K. Yes you could probably build a kernel that would load but you wouldn't have much of a userspace and the idea is to run (simple) graphical programs so keeping as much of the system free has to be a design goal.
Democrat delenda est
Well, strictly speaking, by definition a $12 game console is a $12 computer as well.
Well, strictly speaking, by definition a $12 digital calculator watch is a $12 computer as well.
It may be all very ho-hum for you with your GHz PC and internet connection
No, I'm comparing it with the "$12 Apple ][" that it was originally rumored to be.
all MIT has to do is come up with a NES cartridge with decent software
And its own cartridge slot and some kind of removable mass storage so you can share what you've created with it. That's what made the personal computer revolution. That's why the Apple II and Commodore 64 and Atari 800 beat the technically superior but fatally crippled TI-99/4a.
Which ended up being nothing more than a console, in the end.
To sell for $12.00 you a parts list under $6.00. That means using a single-chip ARM7 with on-chip ram and ROM, and the ones I'm finding have less ram than an Apple II. You're not going to fit even a 1970s UNIX implementation in that, and you'll end up with the same problem the original Mac had: the system software took up so much RAM your 128k Mac had about 12k free for working space with even the simplest apps, and to make even that possible the OS design crippled them until they replaced it with OS X.
So you're going to have to bootstrap the whole OS and development environment from scratch, and what you end up with isn't going to have any kind of upwards growth towards an open source free unix environment.
To make an ARM-based design actually useful, you're going to have to target RISC-OS, not a new OS, and I have a feeling that even RISC-OS is going to push the limits of what you can run in $6.00 worth of parts.
I can visualize an Apple-][ clone fitting in that budget, but I think ARM is pushing it.