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UPDATE: MIT team working on $12 NES, not Apple II

Looks like the Boston Herald got it wrong.The MIT group that was researching how to make a $12 computer for developing nations was actually working on a machine that's more Super Mario than Steve Jobs.
Written by Andrew Nusca, Contributor on

Looks like the Boston Herald got it wrong.

The MIT group that was researching how to make a $12 computer for developing nations was actually working on a machine that's more Super Mario than Steve Jobs.

Computerworld's Eric Lai discovers the truth:

The Herald and other reports interpreted Lomas' comments as meaning that the TV Computer, apparently made by a company called Victor, was an unbranded knockoff of some member of the Apple II family.

But according to pictures and a wiki partly maintained by Lomas, the Victor-70 is an 8-bit machine that so closely resembles the original Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as the Famicom, that it accepts its cartridges.

So all those comments about basing a machine on Apple II technology were moot. But the beloved Famicom? That's a whole 'nother story. Let 'er rip in TalkBack.

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