From the NES Album 'Color Caves'
Thanks to Don Miller, AKA, No-Carrier… He’s been giving us great advice for NES programming, even though we are hoping to use as little assembly code as possible.. 
No-Carrier produces most excellent 8-bit visual designs, and he also coded the first album ever released for the NES: VegaVox with Alex Mauer.
It’s hard not to love the chiptunes scene..
One of the key learnings from IDDS 2008 was the importance of early market and product research in the design process for developing countries. The earlier in the process you know about what your users think about the product and how much are they willing to pay for it the more you can benefit from that data throughout the design process. We intend to conduct similar market research using the existing educational TV computers (TVC) in our target markets of rural Ghana and urban Brazil. This early research will also help us understand what type of local educational content is needed in these markets.
One of the first steps in this research process is to find out how can we get some units of TVCs from the manufacturer in China to these target markets as cheaply as possible through an efficient distribution channel. We had been trying to get more information about the TVC manufacturer in China, but haven’t had any significant progress so far.
Anyone in the community has ideas on this or anyone had dealt with Chinese manufacturer in past?
Beautiful. Did you know you could program on a Nintendo?
Did you know that a keyboard was released for the Famicom?
Yep. The year was 1984–one year before the NES was even released in America. The primary purpose of the keyboard was to enable simple programming (The programming language was NS-HUBASIC, a variant of BASIC)
This keyboard right here is why a $12 computer exists. So we need to know as much as possible about it!
It would be excellent to fill up this page with as much information as we can find. Thanks! I think it would be a good research project. Let me know if you find anything crazy.
Amazing. Computers actually looked like this back in 1984
In 2004, Bob Rost taught a class about programming NES games at Carnegie Melon University. He built a compiler that enables a person to program NES games in BASIC. He calls the framework nBASIC, and it is available on this page. This makes programming so much easier!
Anuj and Jesse have been using nBASIC to start programming Ghanaian content on the $12 computer. I told Bob about their work, and he replied to me saying:
Games from Bob's class
I’m glad that my course materials have been helpful for you, and I hope the nbasic compiler and other tools prove to be beneficial as well (aside from their occasional bugs). Don’t hesitate to email again if you have any specific questions or design problems that you think I could help to answer.
As a side note, based your previous email, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the efficiency of nbasic’s output in most cases, and the complexity of the games it will allow you to create in any given time frame. You are of course welcome to use, abuse, change, and distribute the source code in any way you like.
Best of luck to you and your team.
-Bob
That is incredible! Do you think this community could help improve the efficacy of nBASIC? If we could program games using such an accessible language, this would substantially reduce the time, effort, and cash required to write a game in assembly code. If we want to promote local game production, there needs to be an easier way to program.
Thanks, Bob!
Over the past 2 days, we’ve gotten a lot of blog coverage!
Engadget, Slashdot, Digg, ZDNet, Ars Technica
However, all this coverage is reporting that we are using Apple II technology. One blog goes so far to say:
“Apparently Apple II parts are flooding India and other developing countries and people are building make shift computers out of them.” MacMod
That would be amazing, if it were true. But it’s not. At all! 
So, for the record, we are using a machine that is based on the Nintendo Famicom (known as the Nintendo Entertainment System in the U.S.), not the Apple II. However, the 6502 chip technology of both was very similar.
Eric Lai at Computer World wrote a great article that provides more clarity about our project. David Zeiler at the Baltimore Sun also clears this up.
Honestly, I think it was great that so much discussion took place on Slashdot, assuming that our project was based on the Apple II… Many loved the platform, but other’s suggested using C64 or a z80 instead… All should be open hardware platforms by this point, so it’s worth considering.
Chiptune hero: Nullsleep
Here is an NPR ‘Marketplace’ radio segment about our project at IDDS.
They were quite positive, but they said:
“The team at MIT is building its computer around a Nintendo-style console, like the ones we used 20 years ago. Hopefully they’ll lose the music.”
Nope. Not a chance.
In fact, here’s some perfectly excellent 8-bit music for the NES: “Chippon,” by NullSleep
One Laptop Per Child ‘Applauds’ Effort but Dismisses Comparisons
Thank you to Ashley Phillips for writing a well-researched and balanced article about our project. Notably, she interviewed Chuck Kane (president and COO of OLPC) as well as Walter Bender (former president of OLPC software and content; current director of Sugar Labs). I greatly respect the efforts of Laptop.org, and while we share similar goals, it’s quite clear that an updated Nintendo is a far cry from the Children’s Machine.
How do you think PLAYPOWER’s approach differs from OLPC? What can we learn from the path-breaking work of OLPC?
The Poverty Action Lab at MIT is an organization that seeks to:
“improve the effectiveness of poverty programs by providing policy makers with clear scientific results that help shape successful policies to combat poverty.” http://www.povertyactionlab.org/
This is important, because it is rare that poverty programs are rigorously evaluated or compared. The Poverty Action Lab is essentially about proving what works, and what doesn’t.
In 2003, J-PAL published a study about a randomized trial of computer-aided learning. They investigated the use of computer-aided learning programs (focusing only on math skills) across 100 different schools in the city of Vadodara, India, and found that it was highly successful in improving math competency. However, they concluded that the $1000 computers were not a cost effective way of improving education in this context. You can read about the study here.
So, the bottom line is: Computer-Aided Learning can be very effective. But can we make it effective on a computer that costs less than $20?
Thanks Doc!
The great folks at the Edgerton Center were kind enough to host us during our time at the International Development and Design Summit (IDDS). In fact, Jim Sales helped us take this classic picture of a bullet going through some crayons; notice that the bullet has actually been deformed by the crayons! (Photo credit to Jess Gatley of the Boston Herald. He was taking pictures of our team, and Jim asked if he wanted to photograph the crayons.)
Coincidentally, PLAYPOWER’s Daniel Rehn completed his thesis on the amazing late Doc Edgerton
LA Gallery Opening Thursday, August 14. http://www.iam8bit.net/ for more info
Atari Games from the Collection
NOTCOT did a great sneak-peak of our home at UCSD, in the Center for Research in Computers in the Arts (CRCA): the Game Libratory!
“The Game Libratory is a new game library / laboratory whose mission is to provide researchers with access to game hardware and software.”
At the Game Libratory we’ve got nearly every game platform from the PS3 to the Atari2600, and literally hundreds of pounds of games. There are still gaping holes, however, so donations are welcome!
Unfortunately, I’m not aware of any institutions that are archiving legacy hardware and software. To guide our R&D for the TV-Computer, we are hoping to find an archive of educational games, for the Apple II and other early systems.