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

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.