Not only can this nifty old-school 8-bit computer play all of your old NES games (with a converter, of course), but you can also program your own mind-challenging games, stimulating chiptune music, and “circuit-bending art” with this affordable keyboard, mouse, and controller combination. The package includes the keybaord, mouse, two game controllers, an OS cartridge (containing a GUI in Madarin Chinese as well as an English DOS prompt, BASIC programming language and sprite manipulator, and an 8-bit music composer), RCA cables, and a nine-volt power supply. What’s more is that it ships in 3-5 business days, so you can relive the golden days of Saturday mornings with the NES before the week is out.
i want to buy 5 of these for the kids.
Anyone selling these in the UK?
I believe that they’re shipping to other countries, but it takes longer and costs more for the shipping.
Something like this could make a greater impact with children than OLPC 🙂
I wonder what that could do in the hands of a ten year old. If you can power it on and start to “program” for what BASIC is worth at least, then the possibilities are infinite…
Some professors believe that starting with BASIC ruins one’s brain for any real programming. Could this actually be an evil plot of some sort?
Starting with BASIC didn’t do hundreds of 80s kids any harm.
I, myself, have gone on to learn VB, Pascal, PHP, C/C++ as well as a few smaller niche languages.
Edited 2009-04-01 09:46 UTC
Well, that could be the brain damage in question. 🙂
VB = Visual Beginners all-purpose symbolic instruction code.
This surely convices you that I’m quite old, but BASIC was my first programming language, too (on a robotron KC 87). I’m glad that my days of BASIC and Pascal are over, allthough I sometimes practice GOTO KNEIPE : INPUT BIER. 🙂
To be fair, VB has grown it’s roots in BASIC. In fact it’s a whole new language in it’s own right. And one that’s actually pretty good for knocking up quick GUI interfaces to otherwise manual processes or building MSOffice macros.
Sure, it’s not nearly as powerful as C++ and platform-tied unlike Java, but it’s just another tool that’s available for the right jobs.
BBC Basic for me. I miss those machines
BBC BASIC – procedures, functions and an inline 6502 assembler. I miss the Beebs too. A bit.
Starting with BASIC didn’t do hundreds of 80s kids any harm.
I, too, started with BASIC on C64. Then I moved on to assembly, C, C++ and PHP. Never bothered with any BASICs, even Visual Basic, after C64 though
Psh, those “professors” are not in touch with reality. As limited as basic is, it’s still a good introduction for the curious child, where languages like C, C++, and Python might overwhelm them at that point. The very nice thing about basic, for this purpose, is its completely interpreted nature, you can run the program and monitor exactly which lines get executed, and look at said lines, all without having to learn a debugger. I’d say it’s actually a very good introduction to programming for the youngsters, considering you learn some basic programming principles coupled with some basic debugging techniques. Basic itself is of limited practical use, but the principles are the same and it makes an excellent introduction.
0 goto hell
:-p
Edited 2009-04-01 13:59 UTC
That’s more like it. I was a kid when I learned BASIC – If I was learning C when I was ten then pointers would have made me pick up a skateboard and say ‘fcuk computers d00d’ for a solid ten years. But in BASIC I could poke a value into an address and peek it out in a whole different part of the program. Years later I found out what I had done. I sort of wish I still had those tapes.
Now I am not suggesting anyone learn basic as an adult (or use a computer that has less RAM than any modern chip has for cache) but for 1983 it was the bomb
These boxes will be someones first computer too
Not to mention you can give one of these to your kids in those in-between years between (1) being smart enough to use a computer, and (2) being mature enough to use a computer wisely.
(The years between 1 and 2 will vary by child.)
Wonder if it is a full version of DOS. Too bad it’s not the 6510 CPU – C64 anyone?
Forgot to include a link to the wonderful Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502
Jeff
basic interpreter and composer? wtf? give me a famicom compatible device with usb/sd that can read 6502 programs.. and we’ll talk about hackable. This doesn’t do it for a true 8 bits hacker
It’s famicom compatible too, read the article. 😉
i know, but it’s not useful for developing actual 6502 stuff for it
I mean, it sounds novel and all, it’s nice it’s in production, but, seriously, why not just buy a used Commodore 64 or Atari off of Ebay, get some more peripherals, access to VAST amounts of information, and programs, etc.
Yea, you can’t play Nintendo games…but, the C64 and Ataris were some seriously fine computers and I think would be a better option for someone wanted to go down that path than one of these.
It seems to have gone unmentioned that sales of this product will benefit a worthy cause:
http://playpower.org/