Playpower.org

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. 

Flash memory is incredibly important for our educational TV computer.   This would enable us to keep hundreds of high quality games on one cartridge, and we might even able to remove the flash memory so it is easy to put new content on the machine.

Additionally, Flash is necessary if you want people to be able to save their work.  Imagine writing BASIC programs, but not having a place to store it!

What’s a first step, in terms of figuring out how to build this ourselves?  Here is a useful wiki page about the issue.

Flash Memory Cartridge
http://www.retrousb.com/index.php?productID=133

Tools for NES hacking, including FLASH cartridges
http://www.retrousb.com/index.php?categoryID=86
Make a FLASH cart
http://ameba.lpt.fi/~hataarto/nes/

Playing Double Dragon in North Korea

Lev Manovich sent me this picture: a ‘computer lab’ in North Korea, where groups of children play 8-bit video games on the “MicroGenius” (a famicom clone).  The devices used by these students don’t have keyboards–but the hardware is otherwise identical to the $12 Playpower platform.

I wish I knew more about what was going on here.  This is North Korea, so I can’t exactly praise it.  However…

I love the idea of large numbers of children in a room, playing video games and using 8-bit computers.  There is immense potential for peer learning and problem solving in situations like this.  Considering that a 15 station computer lab costs only $1000 ($200 for the computers and $750 for the TVs), this is a model that could provide early computer experience to millions of children.  Look at how many children can use one computer… or chair, for that matter…!

Link

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

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?

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.

The machine we are investigating at IDDS is based upon the Nintendo Famicom (The Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System–NES).  The reason why we have chosen this platform is

1. All relevant patents have expired (patents last for 20 years, and the Famicom was released in 1983)
2. Many different brands of Famicom Clones are currently being manufactured in China, with a keyboard, mouse, and game controllers, all for a wholesale cost of less than $10
3. There is a wealth of content on this platform, educational and otherwise
4. There is a large and active online NES community that has developed resources to help create new games and content

The first point is most important.  For because the patents on this hardware have expired, this machine is defacto public-domain (however, the software or games are still very much protected by copyright laws).  Therefore, a primary purpose of PlayPower is to cultivate an online open-hardware and open-software community that has a focus on hacking these Famicom Clones and producing computer-aided learning materials.

Amy Smith, in the D-Lab

I’ve just arrived in Cambridge to attend this amazing summit, hosted by Amy Smith’s D-Lab at MIT.  Over 60 people from all over the world have gathered here at MIT to work for a month, in teams of 6, on appropriate technologies for developing countries.  My roommate is Shaibu, from Tanzania — he works for Global Alliance Africa, and helps runs a bike shop in Arusha that works with Bikes Not Bombs.

Catch more information about the Summit here!

http://www.iddsummit.blogspot.com/