Would there possibly be a port to any other calculators? Some of us out here are feeling left out! I.E the 85, 83, and 82

I doubt it. I have had an 83 for years now and I know it doesn't have the memory for movies.The 85 and 82 have the speed, but not the memory either. However, this possible compression system opens up possibilities far beyond movies....

Can someone explain me why the 83 is faster in basic than the 82 and slower on some ASM progs?...
ASM progs don't, or use few ROM calls but CPU speed is teh same so why?...

It all has to do with the way the programs are parsed and loaded when they are ran.

I'm not sure about the 83, but if it's the same as the 86, it's because they had to page the memory to get more in there, and that results in a slowdown in some of the machine code execution.

There definitely will not be a port of this application to those calculators. There isn't enough memory for a whole lot more than 45 seconds or so.

It's not like I give a damn for video, anyway.

Let him at least finish writing it for the TI-86 before asking for a port to another calculator.

This program sounds awesome! I've always wanted to try to put animations on my 86, but i don't know enough asm to make something like the itchy & scratchy animation or the red dress one. I just don't get how a couple minutes of video could be sqeezed into less than 98k.

I betcha I know where he got the name from!

Is there any possibility of a port to the 92+/89? Maybe with Archive compatiblity, 390k of greyscale movies makes me drool... I know you can't write every program for every calculator, but the 92+ and 89 have so much memory, something like this would be useful.
Also, can you _PLEASE_ change the name of the program so it doesn't sound (and look) like a cheap Quick Time rip-off (which is obviously where you got the name from) I am sorry, but QwikTym just looks stupid.
Suggestion: Animated .gif conversions.

Hey, personally, i dont care what the name of the program is called, as long as it works, it could be called something dumb like "movie time" or "Video program" its not the name that matters, its the actual program that i care about.

It's not possible to port an 8x asm program to the 89/92. They use two totally different flavors of asm and to get the same thing on both platforms would require a complete rewrite of the program, not just a port.

Just wondering, why bother putting a movie onto a calculator? I mean, you might as well play it on a computer, because it takes no space on an average hard drive compared to a calculator.

Also, I'd rather have a few games on my calc then a 3-minute movie. No offense, it's a challenging program to write, but it's just not practicle unless the calculator had a lot more memory, or a floppy drive. (And, I'd rather play Insane during Calculus then watch the same movie 10 times during class...)

However, if the programmer adheres to the quicktime(tm) idea, he'll allow other programs to build in mini-qwicktym peices, possibly window animations to compress sprites, tiles, and backgrounds. If the programmer writes his program with the intent that other programs can access it for good graphics compression, and the programmer gives good documentation on how to access it, the program will be more sucessful and more practicle then a simple movie player.

As far as sound goes, there are two topics to address:

#1: So far in my high school of 1000 people, I have never encountered anyone that accually attempts to get sound out of their calculator on a regular basis; if sound was supported, it may play on muted calculators.

#2: Supposedly, sound is not implimented due to CPU utilisation. However, if someone desired sound, wouldn't it be possible to hold a still frame or play a less-quality animation?

However, if this program is written correctly, I see it as a powerful tool for graphics on a calculator.

Dude, that's great, but shit.. if u gotta criticize the guy, at least spell correctly: practical, not practicle and utilization, not utilisation. That's All.

I'll agree with the first one, but the second one could be a British variant. But still...get your spell checker out and start using it!!

I think this is a great idea. It goes to show that a 4MHz (I think) processor can go a long way. Why, if it wasn't for the cramped memory, who knows what we'd have on the calcs! Great idea, and keep up the good work!

im not positive but i always thought it was 6mhz.

I believe the spec from Zilog actually says 8 MHz, but that may not be the same model as they use in the 8x Z80-based calculators; I wouldn't know.

As for the idea behind the movie player, I agree with some that it isn't the most useful thing for the calculators. But look at it this way, it's great for gaining experience writing compression / movie algorithms.

the processor in the calculator is the 6.1444Mhz version from zilog (even though it is not mad eby zilog). but, that is at maximum oscillator speed. the osciallator in the calculators (ti-8x) runs at aprroximately 1.999Mhz (as was shown by several speed benchmark tests)

that is the reason that the 'turbo' modifactions can be made to speed up the calc by up to ~3X (~2Mhz*~3 =~6Mhz) using a different modifaction, a ~3.5x speed increase can be gotten, wich slightly overclocks the calc.

About all the memory problems... Try the Expander II, I don't have one, but I heard they go up to a meg and that might allow for this utility to be quite practical.

It is rather pointless to program for the Expander II seeing as how even fewer people have an Expander II than use sound. But I agree, if the Expander II costed _much_ less (I know the parts are expensive, but still 50 buck is about half the price of the calc in the 1st place) and more people had it, 1 meg's worth of movies would rule. Also, this movie player will be a _big_ help to program developers making promos for their new calc progs.

I know the Expander II is for the TI-85 and holds about half a meg, which, according to the designer, is more than enough. I think it has been ported to 86 and 92.

for ti-92, ported to the 92+, 86, 85. anyone can port it for the 82/83 but no one wants to. If someone wants to, all the sources are at the e2 website: www.flash.net/ ~bryanr

Actually, I am absolutely sure that it was made for the 85, was ported to the 86, then the 92. It has still not been ported to the 89 or 92+, or the 83 or 82. Sorry if my spelling is incorect.

Ben