Two words: Hot Dog!

I almost thought ti was done making new calcs.

TI will never stop making new calcs. If they stop, in the long run ,they'll go out of business. And besides, technology is always getting better, so why would they stop, when in 20 years from now, a ti-89T will seem like a piece of crap?

They won't go out of business. TI's revenue from the Educational & Productivity Services division (aka calculators) for 2005 was 3% of their total revenue. That's nearly insignificant.

TI as a whole definitely won't go out of business, but the post is correct. If the calculator division doesn't do anything new they could all get laid off. The products right now are mature: If TI's education department wanted they could keep marketing, slash R/D and wallah profits go up. Maybe they'd redesign the hardware every once in a while to reduce manufacturing costs.

But that can keep them going for so long. Marketing can only push the same products for so long (They've saturated the market with fairly durable products: my sisters got hand me down calculators) and eventually there might be some competition from casio/hp/$100 laptops/MSoft's origami/PDAs

Actually in the US they've already won the marketing war against HP and casio so they could layoff a large section of that department.

I must tell you that it was TI that first made the IC
We remember Jack Kilby don't we?

By new calculators I mean something completely new. Not the 84 stuff.

I wonder if its m68k or something. That way we could code C for it :D

I know this is like asking for a million dollars but it would be nice if it had x86 equivelant processor and/or full usb peripheral support. that's about the only thing that would sell me. especially if it gets bigger than the current ones -- already bigger than a pda. i'm poor so i can't afford much.

If they DO use an x86, they will probably use a Transmeta Crusoe. It's i386-compatible, but uses much less power.

why would they use any i386 processor let alone a transmeta efficion. that would use way too much power and it would get warm. and i dont thnk they make processors slow enough to warrant useage in a calculator. i'd guess they would go for a PDA-ish proccessor

It would be "watch your battery drain in real-time with our new battery monitor..."

LMAO

They might underclock it, like they did with the 83+. That would save power and keep it cool.

but why not use a processor made to save power from the start and have decent speed and not waste too much power.

That would be the best solution. I'm guessing this is going to use a 68K, to not totally break all compatibility if nothing else.

I think that they will break compatibility anyway. if it has a touch screen of a wider resolution then all graphical programs will be broken. also the 68k calcs broke compatibility with the z80's so I don't see why TI would care.

Actually, I wasn't really thinking about programs. I meant that the 68K would be powerful enough and their programmers that worked on the 89/92/v200 wouldn't have to learn to use a whole new processor architecture, which would just delay the release, bring in more bugs, and drive up the cost.

I didn't think of that, I guess it makes sense though.

Why the obsession with x86? x86 is a horrible chip! Why would they spend all that time to switch to x86 when they have a host of much better-designed chips that don't have 20 years' worth of cruft?

the x86 is still in use today. Your P4, Semprons, 64s are all a type of x86 processor

I wouldn't be suprized. The m68k can definetly handle that and TI is too cheap to make something completely new.

We can do that with an ARM, x86 or whatever too. (As long as it's not a Z80. :-D) We won't be able to use the current TIGCC anyway. :-(

The bigger question is: will it allow sending unsigned C programs at all? Or will it allow TI-sanctioned FlashApps only?

If this calculator is z80, im gonna be really truned off from buying one, since z80 is somewhat limited.

I have a theory, though, that it will be compatible with 68k and z80, unless it has its own language, in which case, it would take a while for programs to come out, since people would need a few months to learn the language and get good at it.

>compatible with 68k and z80

Um, I'm guessing you don't know anything about Z80 *or* 68K assembly...or assembly in general...

>If this calculator is z80, im gonna be really truned off
>from buying one, since z80 is somewhat limited.

Don't worry, I'd bet money that it's not.

fyi i am fluent w/ z80, but dont know anything about 68k. i was just assuming it might have an OS that can "emulate" z80 and 68k progs

Or maybe two processors...

*sigh* It's hard enough getting two processors to share a bus and resources in a mainframe, it would be completely pointless (and too hard to implement) in a graphing calculator... It would be an interesting thing to try yourself, though.

why would TI make a signed asm/C programs calculator when almost all their other calcs support unsigned programs.

It's all about the $$.

My bet is an ARM9 clocked at 133MHz with 8Mb of RAM with a price tag of $200 to $250.

And... that we will see a price reduction of about 10% for all currently available calculators.

Wow, those are the exact specs for the GP32!

You are correct. ;)

The ARM9 is a powerful and affordable CPU.

For anyone wondering what a GP32 is... see the link.

133Mhz is better than my old Win95 computer. It would be really cool if you could run Windows. Then you could blame a crash for not turning your homework in :)

Better yet, if it runs windows, it'll run Linux!

Yeah, that would be fun to run uC linux on a calc...

DOS/x86 emulator.(linked)

not even close to linux but its still freaking cool

Well, if you have a 133Mhz with an MMU, you could have a nice full linux system. X anyone? :-)

The last time I ran X windows on a system with a 166MHz processor (Pentium MMX) & 32MB RAM, I decided to go back to Windows 98 (this was a few years ago, though). Also, unless it has a touch screen it would be kind of pointless (unless you used a USB mouse, but then you need a mousing surface).

Maybe a stripped-down version of X without all the bloat? Hey, the source is available, and it's much easier to take out unneeded functions than add new ones IMO. :-)