Yes I know this is flame bait, but it is also my opinion.

Yea yea yea... all these cool new apps for the 83+. Whatever happened to the 83? I'm surprised Joe even bothered to make ION compatible with the 83... no one seems to care about it anymore. I get an 83 for school, and then 2 years later they come out with a new calculator, which then becomes the default in school, and me and a couple of my friends are the only ones with 83s. I spent just as much on my 83 as you did on your + (maybe more, i get ripped off a lot), and I think me and the other owners of the original 83 shouldn't just be blown off like that.

End of my flame bait... sorry if i made anyone mad. I'm not trying to say that 83+ owners are worse than those who own an original 83, just that they have no right to do this to my expencive (well...) 83 that I thought would be a good calc no matter how many 89s and 92s and 1209429s or whatever they came out with.

<flamebait>
The 83 will fade to dust simply because the 82 is better.
</flamebait>

Seriously though, the 83 has loads of great features, including: Good Games!
ION just kinda s*cks on an 83, use SOS instead.

For that matter, ANOVA microshell really s*cks. It messes up the TI OS to the point of unworkability!

-Dwedit
    Here come the fortune cookies!  Here come the fortune cookies!  They're wearing paper hats!

PS: The 82 has 2K more ram than the 83!

It is better then the 83 but it depends on which module you have. If you have the old one (bad screen, ugly square look, and ugly arrow keys) then I personly think it sucks compared to the 83 if its the new module (sweet round look <like the 83>, raised screen <like the plus>, keys like the plus) then I think thats much better then the 83, almost as good as the 83 plus, if you add flash technology then its better. I also think the 83 will fade to dust (like you do) simply because of the plus comming out. I know many people say they wasted their money on an 83 because they bought it before the plus came out. Oh yea, I have an 83 as well as the plus module and I agree ION suck on it. It's not like it can be used to get the plus verson of the same game and play it.

On the contrary, I know of only two or three people (all freshmen) at my school with 83's. Most of them have 86's or 89's.
It all depends on the school you go to and what calcs people with games own. If I hadn't gotten an 86 (and promptly after the 89 came out, an 89), most students would probably have 83's.

--BlueCalx

Our school, like most, order in large quanities of calcs at a time, when I got my first calc 2 years ago, the one of choice was the 83. Now they have moved on to the 83+. I am the only person in my school, I wouldn't be surprised if it was district, to have an 89. I think I once saw an 85, but that was that only other higher # calc.

My school rents out about 50-100 89s. :) I rented one for $20 last year (for the whole school year) and this summer I bought one. Probably at least that same number own an 89.

Nick Chaves

P.S. My high school size is 2700 people - that probably makes a difference. I don't know how big that is compared to others.

well...I happen to think that the 83+ is nicer as far as BASIC goes, and some other features, but really...it sucks. 24K ROM?, i mean, come on...I have an 83+, and wish I had an 83 instead, becasue there are NO good non-shell games in ASM, like Wade Peteresons Pokemon, for the 83+...but, I am going to get an 89, because I want to play Sonic Misadventures, and do some other stuff...like 3D graphing (because my 3D Graphing program for the 83+ REALLY, it isn't like the 3D graphing for the 89...I think TI should hurry up and release this dumb thing...I'm tired of waiting! oh well...hey, anyone know Mariah Carry? I don't either...nice stickers man...gives me an idea...

I can just imagine...all the no-life freaks will have PORN (drawn with Pen command) appear on start up!

First comment BTW!

Yeah, calculator porn (stored as pic variables) is a popular distribution item at my school. I think its pretty sad.

~Jonathan Taylor

I once made a bunch of greyscale pictures for my 86 with some program, but it was a separate program rather than a pic variable.

LOL:), Of course at my school since so many people go straight to the prog button and then A (ION) as soon as they turn their calculator on, that would probly be what happens.

<addition>
Anyone who needs a new link port because their old one wore out, just get it fixed by ti or the do it your selfer which is probly more expensive (definitly if your warrenty is still pending), just buy a black graph link take it apart and take the link port from that.
</addition>

This finally makes TRUE Operating Systems (OS's) available! I am quite pleased and can't wait for this to come out because I have, for the longest time, wanted a program to automatically run when I turn on my calc! Hmm...I am going to have to get that!

Matt H.

OS's have always been available, the only problem is most people are dependant on TI's ROM and don't _really_ wan't to get rid of it, what they really want is some sort of easy-interface shell that will let you drop into TIOS as necessary, which means it isn't any more of an operating system than a standard shell.

It was always possible to run programs on startup on the TI-86.

How do you make a program start up automatically with a TI-86?

'S ok. It still sucks that my VTI 2.5b4 won't work the god damn 83+ rom right, despite the fact i've loaded around four different ones, and even upgraded the calc to 1.12... <p>
But still, being able to start up my calc with my shell hacks that never exit because the shell launcher has been recognized as a program that could be launched in the shell is always fun... Try it with AShell on an 83standard...

VTI won't even run any rom on my computer, at least it does not display anything on the screen while the emulation is running, even if I press the assigned on button.

same with me but uhhh try running it reset the emulation close down VTI then start it back up it should work

Let's face it, in the last 3 years NOTHING great has come out of the TI community. Let's investiage WHY:

TI has produced a number of new calculators that are "improvements" apon the earlier 82 and 85. While these calculators have more memory and somtimes better resolution and cpu's, the truth of hte matter is programmers have gotten wasteful. This is very similar to computers. In the old days you had to push the system to get the bigest bang for your buck in a very small amount of space. You had to pull all kinds of tricks and programmers were really Gods. No adays the computer has gigabytes of memory and Microsoft gobbles all of it just to save a 1page word file. BLAH! =(

This is exacly what is happening with TI calcs. With the 85 an asm programmer has 28K of space to work with. However, nobody wants ONE game on their calculator so you realy have only about 5k to work with unless you make a VERY cool game. When I made mega racers it enede dup around 9-10K and I still get complaints that it was too big. levels were compressed, images were compressed, and much much more.

Regarding this new "flash" technology, I remind you all that there were password programs that executed first when you turned the calculator on. There were a TON of these and the 85 NEVER HAD FLASH MEMORY! in fact, these programers were delveoped about 4 years ago!!! If you wanted, these programs could display a picture or run a program or.... wait! this is the same thing!!

So basically my long point is that all this FLASH stuff is crap, worthless, and my 85 will always be a better calculator with more memory then all of yours combined (taken I have smaller more effecient programs, a 1meg sf expander, turboed to about 10mhz, and a HUGE library of games and shells to run under). I think my point is rather clear....
Will Stokes
(author of mega racers for Usgard)

Well my TI-89 crushes your 85. So there.

hey! you're right! oh wow! my 89, especially after ams 2.00 come out, will beat any 85 by a long shot. and it can graph in 3d! wow!

He's referring to the quality of the programs produced, not the mathematical prowess of the calculator. If that was an issue, anyone can see that the 89 would win :P

--BlueCalx

Whoa, does this guy know how to become flamebait or WHAT? First of all, if you actually *knew* anything and weren't *ignorant*, you'd know why FLASH is getting so much attention. When your calc crashes or it's reset, the FLASH rom is still there. The user available archive is huge, making the total amount of space roughly 5 times your TI-85's space (before you expanded it, of course). FLASH also allows for much more stable programs largely due to the fact TI has to sign them. Will's comment upsets me because he is a programmer, most likely a good one. He represents the community, perhaps moreso than the non-programmer. With all this, he is still ignorant. To make a judgement for something, you must first know the facts. I bet you he hasn't even sat down for more than an hour and just used an 83+. I could be wrong, I'm not trying to prejudge him either, but what I am doing is pointing out that before you come out and say something, you must think it over. Thanks, and if you have any flames, please e-mail them to me and don't continue this thread.

man, I sure hate dipshits in highschool how talk out of their asses and think they know everything. Let me tell you something pal, I've known about all the issues (and more) that you have listed since befor eyou were wearing dipers. The first expander (SF EXpander by Mel Tsai, which I built myself) uses FLASH MEMORY. what doe sthis mean? Yes, it holds stuff for a VERY long time with NO power supplied. more than just crashing yoru calc, you can remove all power sources and it holds. that is the important feature of flash memory. the newer expanders and others planned have a feature of sending back to the calc even after a crash, so all this "obboard" flash stuff is unncessary.

btw, who are you anyways, trying to get off knowing more then me? I'm a sophomore at Cornell University, a cs major, and I just finished building my very own pipelined mips processor from wires and gates up. I just ran a recursive program (mergesort) which i wrote for it in asm, and you are trying to tell me you know more about all this stuff?? Come on!

its not unnessary, remember you can upgrade a flash calculator with just a flash installer and a graphlink. So unlike the origional 92, you don't have to open a panel and replace the chip with a newer one.

Did you even read Will's previous posts in this thread? Do you know the meaning of the word "unnecessary"?
He is saying that everything done by the Flash memory in the recent Ti Calculators can be done by the Ti-85, and has been available to the Ti community for a good three or four years.

Yes, its true that programmers today have less strict memory requirements to work with than when 85's were the only things around. But writing in assembly language, on a 4mhz, 8 bit processor, is still incredibly more limiting than anything on a "normal" comptuer. The speed and processor limitation is still there, and that's a major bottleneck for most games. And compression is still done for just about anything big. Most ti-86 games use either huffman coding or rle coding for their title screens. Entire games are compressed with bloat, Zip86, and similar programs.

Having said that, I'll admit I was amazed when I went to install the zelda beta (the asm one) for the 89 on my friend's calc and it was around 50k. That's pretty big, although that game looks amazing. The archive ram and fast 68K may spoil 89/92+ programmers, but those still working on the Z80 are optimising just as much as you did three years ago.

Oh BTW, have you played Maze3D? That is an example of a pretty amazing thing that came along in the last three years.

50k... hah! The demo that Sam Heald and I came out for the 82/3/5/6 was only a shade over 7k.

and about Maze 3d... Andreas Ess made a game like that about 3 years ago. I think it was called Daedulus, or something. It had kickass graphics, a level editor, and enemies. So nothing is new with Maze 3d.

"Let's face it, in the last 3 years NOTHING great has come out of the TI community." The _real_ reason is pretty simple... this stuff is programmed (mostly) by high school and some college students. By the time they might get really good, they'll have left school and probably won't have time to dedicate to calculator projects since they provide them for free. Another factor is that calculator users are fickle; only exceptional programs will remain on their calculators at all times, and this means that it's foolish to spend a lot of time on some of the programs. And to conclude, I happen to think quite a few great things have come out of the TI community recently, so perhaps I'm not getting what you mean by "great"?

Great Strides in TI history:

-Zshell 2.0/3.0
-Zshell 4.0
-Usgard/new shells/optimization (huge speed increase in programs and more)
-Fargo/FargoII

-asm on the ti82, a big feat (IMHO)

programs:
-sqrzx
-daedalus
-mario86
-your program here :)

I havnt' played maze3d but I don't think it's supported by teh 85 is it? i only have 85 roms here so I can't emulate the 86 or 89 unless somebody sent me a rom image....

Maze3D is available only for the 86 afaik. I haven't played daedalus, but I'll assume these two programs are somewhat similar. Both are raycasters written from scratch for the Z80, so I'd say both deserve equal recognition.

About your other choices,
ZShell, ASH (82), and Fargo were amazing accomplishments, but they were primarily hacking accomplishments, not programming accomplishments. I don't want to detract from the creators of those shells in any way; I realize that they included some amazing programming too, but their major significance is in allowing other assembly code to run.

Your list of programs strikes me as rather arbitrary. Yes, sqrzx was the first side-scroller for any calc, and daedalus was the first raycaster, but there are many many quality programs out there that are more fun than these. I don't have an 85, but I do see that most Z80 development these days is happening on the 83(+) and 86. If you're not playing recent games on these calcs, you shouldn't be complaining about the lack of games. I realize you love your ti-85, I would too if I had so much invested in it. But implying that it's just as good because it has an expander is incorrect. First, I haven't seen any recent developments in the expanders. Second, most people simply can't or won't build/buy them.

Lastly, I'm sure you're a very intelligent person, but please do try not to sound so conceited. Going to cornell does not make you smarter than everyone else. I know a bunch of people at cornell that I would not consider intelligent at all. (Oh, and why is your email and web page at uchicago?)

I think Maze3D uses Daedalus.

Ciaran McCreesh
http://www.asm86.cwc.net/ for a ti86 asm tutorial.

I go to Cornell
I work at University of Chicago at a Bio Lab