$12 PC based on NES, not Apple II -- even cooler
The $12 PC project just got a little more interesting -- contrary to what the Boston Herald reported yesterday, the project is actually based around an off-license NES clone from China called the Victor, not the Apple II. The machine is entirely contained within a keyboard and accepts NES cartridges as well as Famicom software, so there's already a BASIC -- which might be what project members were referencing when they said that their generation had grown up programming Apple IIs. The Victor isn't quite the machine the Apple II was, obviously, but we're still totally intrigued by entire nations of budding console hackers -- you ready for the competition, Ben Heck?
Read - Computerworld clarification
Read - Project wiki
Read - Computerworld clarification
Read - Project wiki


















That cant be the actual box can it? I mean come on, this is nothing more than one of those 15 dollar japanese Famiclone devices that you can get at flea markets....nothing cool or different about it.
The Victor is a Chinese NES Clone... What were you expecting?
I don't know many clone or knockoff products that come out of china and make me go "wow, now THAT'S box art!"
Yeah but this one is tied up with string!
Wormblot, my first lol of the day!
what's your vector, Victor?
roflcopter :nerd:
What's our clearance, Clarence?
But it *IS* based on an NES. And stop calling me Shirley!
Captain Oveur, you're needed in the Engadget comments section. Please park in the red zone.
Excuse me Miss, I speak Jive.
Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit methamphetamines.
THAT IS SO COOL
i have feeling this'll be a cool little gadget even in the us
Copyright infringement?
Lawsuits?
Pretty sure the copyright ran out on the original NES sometime last year... right? So these things are completely legal now.
The copyright is old on that one and no longer enforceable, at least according to the same story on Slashdot from today.
And the point of this is......?
For $13 dollars can I get it with a touchscreen?
For $13 you can't get a screen at all...
But if it doesn't end up costing $29.99, I'll save some money to buy one. I spent all the $100 I was saving for the Eee on icecream. Only that brought joy to my life again.
When is someone going to make the Commodore 64 retro/basic remake, i'd buy one of those for $12.
The Commodore 20 in one Joystick thingy was incredibly hackable. It allowed anyone with a soldering iron to add a Keyboard, floppy and Joystick ports to it. When ya held the K key (I think it was K) on the keyboard it booted in BASIC mode. I made one inside the god awful Atari 7800/2600 retro case, spray painted it traditional Commodore beige and added stickers. Fun project. I don't use it much tho.
The Commodore 20 in one Joystick thingy was incredibly hackable. It
allowed anyone with a soldering iron to add a Keyboard, floppy and
Joystick ports to it. When ya held the K key (I think it was K) on
the keyboard it booted in BASIC mode. I made one inside the god awful
Atari 7800/2600 retro case, spray painted it traditional Commodore
beige and added stickers. Fun project. I don't use it much tho.
@jeff
You created a different user name to post TWICE? never seen that before
But can it play Crysis on Very High with 2xAA?
Crysis is a piece of shit and so is your face
Lawls @Phanbouy
um, why?
Must be that Nintendo computer that Chinese guy kidnapped himself for.
I'll buy my kid one if I can upgrade to a white Desert Eagle.
lol
Something tells me you haven't seen a Desert Eagle before.
psst....the NES and the apple II have the same processor
good job tech blog guy
psst....the NES and apple II share the same processor, the 6502
good job tech blog guy
psst...you only need to press 'add your comments' once.
good job blog hater guy.
And also used in the Commodore 64, and Atari 2600, feel better now?
Psst, you posted this under your real username, AND your fake one. Oops?
Psytar might had fun cloning Apple, but cloning Nintendo?
Holy crap that's the coolest thing ever!
Uh, those things already sell at $20 in Mexico. They're called "PC Kid" (yeah, very creative), and come with a keyboard/mouse and some working clones (Word, Excel, Minesweeper, they look and work and, surprisingly, feel pretty much like they real counterparts)...
I FAIL, to see the point of this... Those $20 things are already $12, the other $8 are just the seller's profit
The only thing they are doing is, well, improving the software clones. Wich isn't a bad thing either, but not good enough to make it any cooler...
It would have to be a clone of a damn old copy of word... notepad, maybe?
testing
That's Christmas sorted for me
Apparently it doesn't have a spell-checker:
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/dereklomas/TVComputer/photo#5176471145071873378
hey,
I have this at home. There are a lot of knock-offs here in the Philippines. The actual cost is around 500 Pesos (around $12). The keyboard is really crappy that you'll have a hard time keying in the letters.
The clay shooting game is fun though...retro stuff and all.
VIC-20, Biatches!
wow... $12? really?
Wow, my interest level just dropped to zero.
Can someone open up one of these things so we can see how many parts there are?
So when they said they were designing a cheap computer based on old hardware, what they actually meant is that they had imported a widely available system from China and paraded it around as something they created themselves? Bad form.
Exactly. Why does it take four MIT grads to buy Chinese computer knock-offs?
The Beagle Bros. mope off stage.
Well now...
Whether it be based on an Apple, a Nintendo, a C64, or an Atari 2600 it doesn't matter... its all fundamentally the EXACT SAME PROCESSOR!
The NES processor is a lil bit different than the rest, but fundamentally its the same thing.
It'd be curious to see if it has the NES PPU and the 2k of system memory, or if its closer to the Apple ][ with 32-128k... maybe even more...
I also ponder... is the NES GFX chip capable of actually rendering the things these kids hope to do? Or does the system have something else...
---
@chefgon_ign and JohnnyBoy
Read the previous article Engadget did
The project, [...], is centered around cheap Apple II-based machines currently on sale in India and other developing nations that plug into televisions, and the goal is to update the systems with more memory, web access through cellphone tethering and actual storage.
(This article is the correction for that one, informing that its a NES clone, not an Apple ][ knockoff, but as I said earlier... there isn't really a difference)