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.
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.
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: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).
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: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: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].
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, 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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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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 compare
Funkay... (Score:5, Funny)
Each one comes with a free leisure suit.
Re:Funkay... (Score:4, Funny)
Larry will be pleased
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)
Re: (Score:2)
The secret will be to equip each PC with an infectious-disease version of Smell-o-vision.
When it says "You've died of dysentery" well, you had better get your affairs in order.
Re:How to solve world hunger: (Score:5, Funny)
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Nah. It will just teach children to start out as bankers.
That or the wholesale genocide of all moving animals on the plains regardless of whether you can carry the food or not.
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: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: (Score:3, Informative)
Mod this up!. Thats the "root of all Evil".
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 we
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There, fixed that for you.
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Nah, you get them to play Zork, so at least they get to know what a Grue is :)
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That being the Underpants Gnomes' grand plan...
Phase 1: Collect underpants
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit
Buy 2 get 1 program??? (Score:2, Funny)
Where do I send my £12?
Not much details... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd imagine some degree of binary compatibility -- or at the very least, the ability to run BASIC programs from the Apple II.
Apple II. . . Not the computer I personally would have chosen, I had an Atari 800XL which I would prefer any day. But then, the Atari had more proprietary, quirky stuff (custom graphics chips) which might have been a problem, and it had a more non-standard dialect of BASIC.
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!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
System 7.5.3? On a ][e clone?
ARE
YOU
OUT
OF
YOUR
FUCKING
MIND?
Re: (Score:2)
The Apple II has a long history of use for educational purposes. Back when I was in elementary and middle school, Apple IIs (and their Franklin Ace clones) were all over the school, used for administrative and educational tasks alike. (The school had assumed that Apple IIs would be the business machine of the future, and thought that providing students with a good grounding in them would stand them in good stead for their future lives. Nobody foresaw the PC revolution.)
Re:Not much details... (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple... (Score:2)
It aims to carve a niche among the third world's richer poor children.
Or at least the ones with better taste. More like chicken, less like monkeys.
Oh and... 12$ is probably a typo. To be LIKE Apple II it should be something like US $1298. [oldcomputers.net]
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All TFA says that it is loosly based on the Apple II. So what does that mean? Have the same CPU? Same OS? Same amount of RAM? Looks like the Apple II?
Good question. Based on the price, I would assume there WON'T be any proprietary software on it. And if they're going with a different OS, I wouldn't think they'd need to faithfully emulate the original CPU, either. My guess is that they just mean "comparable" hardware in terms of computing power, probably a system on a chip.
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20 PRINT "Answer: "; A$
30 PRINT "HAHAHAHA"
40 GOTO 10
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it probably means they have a fruit selected as the logo
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?
Re:skip to the end, please (Score:4, Insightful)
The real issue is support (Score:2)
Sure, it is easy enough to set up one kid to do his homework on an old calculator or cell phone. Maybe a dozen kids. But the only way to distribute, train and support hundreds of thousands of these into the field in any cost effective way is to have all of them running almost identical hardware and software.
That is the role these ultra-cheap, mass-produced, low-end computers can play.
In fact, these projects are leveraging the pile of old, obsolete devices that are out there, just as you suggest. Exce
rescue raiders (Score:2)
$12 !! (Score:2)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
PC on a chip (Score:2)
Oh, and if anyone has some information on a useful pc-on-a-chip, I'm still curious.
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't precisely a pc on a chip (the core is MIPS-based), but Microchip's PIC32 offerings [microchip.com] gives you a fully 32-bit processor with integrated RAM, ROM, and some peripherals for about $5 per unit. Perhaps not useful if you need x86, but plenty useful if you just want to compile and run ANSI-C applications (GCC has an appropriate MIPS target).
And I am working on a $1 abacus (Score:2)
Seriously though, what practical use is there for an old 8bit Apple II architecture? There are very inexpensive 32bit system on chip architectures (including MIPS - Lexra) in that price range that can at least run embedded Linux (uClinux).
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And one of those will likely be running a 6502 emulator for this project. $12 should be enough to include the PCB and connectors to hook up a TV, keyboard and standard Apple disk drive. Or serially connect a PC with a floppy drive emulator to run from images.
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.
why? (Score:2)
If that's all the computing power they need, they might as well just write an OS for a PIC microcontroller. Those little chips cost about $1.
Though I can't imagine any computer catching on with a nontrivial number of children unless it runs games. Anyone want to port Oregon Trail to PIC? On second thought, starving African children might take the "You have died of dysentery" part of the game the wrong way...
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.
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 automaticall
Re: (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 produ
Commodore (Score:2)
The Commodore 64 was a better computer (more colors, 3-voice synth, etc.), used fewer chips, had more memory, and was cheaper to make. More software was written for it, and it has a much, much more active enthusiast community which has archived and preserved that software. If you're going to spread retro computing over the surface of the globe, wouldn't it make more sense to use the most popular computer of the day?
Why Apple II? (Score:2)
Games! (Score:3, Funny)
Each one comes preloaded with "Little Brick Out" and "Lemonade Stand".
Kmart (Score:2)
This sounds great. Once they make it, they need to be sure to sell it in places like Walmart and Target, so lots of kids get their hands on these and not just those with Slashdot-reading parents.
The third world... (Score:2)
The third world is likely to be eaten by a grue.
But in all seriousness, Visicalc, Bankstreet Writer, and a flat-file database would do the job for a whole lot of people.
Why an Apple II? (Score:2)
Surely the answer isn't to reimplement the Apple II, but to use something like an off-the-shelf ARM based SoC (an older, now cheap one with a display controller) with a cut down Linux (or indeed, RISCOS, as that was an ARM based OS with built-in BASIC and desktop which seems ideal).
The alternative is far more expensive - either using FPGAs to reimplement the Apple II hardware (and this is nothing new anyway, other 8-bit systems have been reimplemented in FPGAs already, from the Amstrad CPC to the C64 and be
Great until... (Score:5, Funny)
This will be great until they sell out and try to put Windows XP on it.
Huge funding problems I see (Score:2)
"MIT Team Working On a $12 Apple (II) Desktop"
Damn, I was working on rather pricey machines while at Cambridge and even pricier ones while at OSU. Never were times so hard at the University that we had to work on Apple II's. Has MIT indeed wasted *all* of its money on random crap like robots?
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
I can do better (Score:2)
I have two apple II's in my garage that they can have for free.
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.
Yeah, but... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Dunno, but Linux can run the Apple ][
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openapple/ [sourceforge.net]
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite running Linux, but with one central Linux servers and a bunch of C64 terminals, you're almost there......
http://members.elysium.pl/ytm/html/linux-term.html [elysium.pl]
But you can run Linux on several models of the Amiga. http://www.anytux.org/hardware.php?baureihe_id=137 [anytux.org]
Or maybe you can find another old computer model that you'd like by browsing this list: http://www.anytux.org/hardware.php [anytux.org]
Layne
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have to. I already have one.
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Finally... a modding score for bad jokes....
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....
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I am not sure how they are going to get the Monitor and keyboard so cheaply though....
mod parent up, the interface is what kills it. It's hard to find a keyboard for less than $10 that isn't used or some orphaned clearance model.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
isn't used or some orphaned clearance model.
So what's wrong with that? Techies who buy this thing for curiosity will have their own, and I doubt underprivileged kids are gonna be that picky.
Build it into the advertising campaign: "keyboards for kids: your old keyboard can make a difference" and try to partner with a big hardware manufacture like Dell or HP and see if they've got a crate of old ones somewhere.
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"...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'?
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The Commodore 64 and Atari computers did have basic pixel framebuffers and sprite programming (much like a mouse cursor). Sprites could be programmed to have a multi-colored (16 color) pixelmap and moved around just by setting XY coordinates.
The most advanced demo I saw was in PCW, where someone has implemented a basic physics engine to run during the vertical blank interrupt. It handled position, velocity, acceleration and gravity. Collision detection was done automatically by the sprite hardware.
Have you
You ain't seen nothing yet (Score:2, Interesting)
To say that the C64 had a "basic pixel framebuffer" is a big understatement.
Soiled Legacy [youtube.com]
That is a 1MHz 8-bit processor pushing the VIC (video) and SID (sound) to their limits.
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And the problem is the cost of display, not the cost of computers...
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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.
No, though I can see why you read that (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because by the time this comes out, $12 worth of Chinese components will cost $75.
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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:retro computers (Score:2)
I considered building an FPGA module that contained all the necessary C64 or Apple hardware, and it's clear that today's devices are certainly up to the task (with a little help from an external SRAM.) In 100-piece quantities, MSRP would n
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You could have bought a Commodore One, which is a variety of 8-bit computers implemented in FPGAs ... several years ago. Even the C64 gaming joystick a few years ago could have sufficed if you modded it.
And there's a reason I've kept a lot of old magazines (either scanned, or physically) ... apart from the lacking the female necessary to create a child aspect anyway, heh.
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I remember seeing the TLC. Unfortunately, the box made it seem like any other so-called "pre-computer".
A description is at http://www.applefritter.com/node/239 [applefritter.com]
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[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.
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....
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
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But that's what I want to know ? Psya duck Psya no chicken ?
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.