PLAYPOWER

Genuine NES Dev Cartridge

One of Playpower’s major goals is to create an open-source development kit for creating new games on the $12 TV-computer.  Currently, it is far more difficult to produce new software for the TV-computer than on, say, the iPhone.  Programming for the 6502 generally requires assembly coding, which is straightforward to learn, but is not terribly accessible.

Open-source developers have provided some great tools for this purpose, however.  Specifically, cc65.org is a community producing free C compilers for 6502-based systems (including the NES).  We’ll hopefully post some functional code this week, after testing it in our development cartridge.

Also, feel free to drop by our demo this Thursday, Feb 19, at the UC San Diego Engineering Research Expo, which is taking place on the first floor of Calit2.

…who sold me my first TV-computer!  This shop also sold loads of solar-powered flashlights, if I recall.

I remember plugging the machine into this little TV, there at the shop (I always recommend testing your electronics in the grey-market).  In just 2 clicks of the mouse, I was at a BASIC programming prompt.  I remember thinking, “hmm, what else could be done with a $10 educational computer?”

Talking with my friends at Srishti School of Design, and then later at Calit2 and MIT’s IDDS, we agreed that the best way to make this computer as powerful as possible would be to open it up to the world as a platform for open-source learning games.  That’s why Playpower is all about content–we’re trying to build better learning games, not cheaper computers.  While an 8-bit computer is a highly constrained environment, you’d be surprised at what it can do!

…but not always for $10.  These units were spotted in Nicauragua by Geoff Galgon, where they were briskly selling for about $25.  Notice the ridiculously scary light-gun?  Yeah, that’s what we call “pedagogically suspect.”  We’ll leave that thing out of our units, thank you very much!

The cheapest we’ve ever found 8-bit TV-computers? About $8, or 55RMB, in China (thanks Newsclan!).  All of these computers are mutually compatible with 60 pin cartridges, and all usually come with educational games and BASIC programming.

Speaking of China, Newsclan, who is leading the Playpower working group in Hangzhou, just translated our website into Mandarin- www.playpower.org/cn

Interestingly, the 8-bit TV-computer supports Mandarin Chinese text, which means it can handle just about any character set.  So, if you’d like to see the world’s most inexpensive home computer in your native language, let us know!

These books sold over 250 Million copies between 1979-1998

This quarter at UC San Diego, three electrical engineering students are working on Playpower for their senior design project.  They come into the Social Movement Laboratory at Calit2 every Tuesday and Thursday from 10am-1pm, so if you want to stop by and see some serious hardware hacking, please do!

They are working on producing a new game cartridge that will feature interactive fiction games, in the style of choose-your-own-adventure stories or (eventually) Zork. We love interactive fiction (Jeremy actually did his PhD on the subject), and believe that it is a great way to encourage kids to read.  We are creating a “framework” for these text-based games that will enable contributions from around the world to be manufactured into new cartridges, in any language!

By the way, the $10 computer currently supports Mandarin, but we’re looking for someone to try to create a tile-set to support Hindi/Marati/etc.

Well, not exactly.  Honestly, it’s a little hard to tell what’s going on with this project.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development unveiled here on Tuesday what has been tagged as an “ultra low-cost” computing-cum-access device that can “make wonders” in the dissemination of education to the remotest corners of India.  The Hindu

While the Times of India calls this effort “Damp Squib,” we nevertheless anticipate an explosion of ultra-low-cost computers over the next 10 years.  Playpower is currently targeting a $10 computer platform that is already available for sale, but in the future, we’d like to port our learning games to multiple platforms–including any $10 laptop, whenever it is released.  Playpower is all about content: radically affordable, effective, fun learning games.