First Comment! (Finally)

This sounds like a really cool thing. Hopefully they can improve on clock (have it run better and use less battery power). Keep working towards better programs.
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"Disco Stu doesn't advertise."

Hello, i'm new to this posting thing and would like to say that I will keep my posts thoughtful and relevant to the topic and hand. I understand that I am not supposed to advertise for my site, so I won't. Anyway, I own an 89 and would like to say that you guys @ DBA are doing a great job! I would be really impressed if you stuck together for >1 year.

amicek

Note : Kty and Fred has been programming together for more than one year (about one year and a half)...

Oh, ok sorry. Well you guys have some good stuff going, so keep it up!

amicek

Congratulations to DBA. They don't get as much recognition as they deserve. The Archive Utility and the on-calc ASM compiler they have made for the 68k calc's blew my mind. They also have made a fun little racing game called Super Car II that is really entertaining. Stay tuned for my review on that game. Anyway's,I hope DBA keeps up with their reputation for making revolutionary programs.

My only problem with the racing games out is that there's no good 3d racing game (i.e. a Need For Speed or Test Drive clone) for the 68k calc yet. Preferably 89/92+. 92 doesn't have enough mem.

I want to see you program a 3D game when TI has released *NO USEFUL* information on the TI-89/92+! The calcs are too underpowered to do games like Need For Speed and the likes. Go buy a PlayStation/Dreamcast if you want high quality games.

You don't really need any calculator-specific information to write a 3D game. You just have to know MC68000 assembly language and some good algorithms.

Test Drive 2? It exists! There is a version for ZX Spectrum, and as you can emulate ZX Spectrum on TI89 using Tezxas you can have genuine Accolade Test Drive 2 with all five levels, including rocks, police cars, punnishments, opponent cars, trees etc.! It is not very fast, but it is still playable.

Are there any qualifications that you must suffice to get a page hosted at ticalc? or is it just free for whoever wants space... No offense DBA

Yes; we try to host sites that we feel deserve special exposure, rather than just being another GeoCities and hosting anybody we can find. This doesn't always mean hosted sites are the prettiest sites around :), but they're almost always established resources or groups of programmers.

More info on the "Site Hosting" page under Services.

Chris

I recently downloaded Archive Utility 3.00 from ticalc.org and saw that it says Thomas Corvazier (sorry if I spelled that wrong) is the author. This is not true! DBA is the author I think ticalc.org should make this change promptly.

there are only two people in DBA, I think. He is one of them.

I don't think so. Fred and Kty are the two members of DBA. They are not Thomas. The only reason that ticalc.org has him confused as the author is that he announced it on his site, when SF AFC (v1.00 Beta) came out, as a way to keep your Archives intact. He did not write this program.

My mistake-you're right. The error should be corrected.

Good that they don't focus on writing games. We already have enough. There should be more real software such as spreadsheets and text editors. I'm currently working on a console library that allows you to display 40*16 characters on the screen of a TI-89. That shold make it possible to develop applications using a simple textmode interface. Why doesn't someone port bash?

> Why doesn't someone port bash?

Why _would_ someone port bash?
While Linux is cool and everything, it isn't exactly small.
Bash binary is around 400kB, and that doesn't include the libraries it uses (ncurses, readline, libc)
And what does bash give? Name completion and scripting? Use catalog and basic.

How about we port software that are useful in a calculator-environment?

Dude, a term program that could run Pine on a 89/92 would kick ass.

Linux on a calc would be super-cool, but i think we should get a decent terminal program working first.

It fealt great to get my 92 to dial up to my ISP, but it couldn't handle any curses commands.

I have idea for CP/M-80 emulator for TI92+. Using matrix 5x3 you can have 80 characters in row, but it must be grayscale with positions of gray and white character backgrounds as on chess board, because there is no gap between letters.
I have Z80 engine already in Tezxas.
Caldera published source of CP/M for free.
I think that someone can find such CP/M hits as Wordstar, Visicalc, Turbo Pascal, MS BASIC and they will be very fast.
Anyway, Soft ware house who wrote TI89 ROM started with MU Math on CP/M.

Only I need some time

Why don't you write a TI-82/83/85/86 emulator for the TI-89/92+. Since you say you already have a Z80 engine it should be quite easy. The ROM cound be stored in archive memory.

The biggest problem is speed.

Z80 based TI calculators are 6 MHz machines, and they can be emulated at 15% of original speed on TI-89. Additionaly, often ROM swapping (and it is case with them) is very slow operation. If TI89 had 68030 instead 68000...

So, is not the same problem with CP/M or ZX Spectrum? With them situation is better, because their working frequences are 2 and 3.5 MHz.

What about Gameboy emulation? I downloaded some informations about Gameboy, but I am too lazy to read them. AFAIK, the biggest problem is to emulate sprites that Gameboy have in hardware.

IMO, it is also possible to emulate Apple II on TI89, this will be very interesting for Americans.

Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and IBM-PC have too complex hardware to emulate.

I belive that it is theoretically possible to emulate original, (1984), Macintosh 128K, because existed emulator of Macintosh on Atari ST, claimed that it is faster than original. This means that this was rewriting of operating system.

Apple II emulation sounds good, but at 140k per disk side, it sounds impossible without damn good compression. Apple panic also looks like crap in 140x96.

But we have about 380 K(in future about 700 K) of archive memory. It is ideal for disc emulation.

Patrick Davidson is working on a computer-conversion program that will take z80 code and convert it into native 68k code so that it can be run on the TI-89/92+. However he is not very far in the coding of the program. He mentioned this to the Assembly-89 List. If you want more info I can forward you the emai he sent.