Wow, you can actually make money for programming. Sound really great.

It seems to me that articles like this have very little turnout. Either this was just posted, or people just don't care about TI anymore.

Check the posting time on the article - it was a little over an hour old when you posted your comment.

What? I think a lot of people care - look at that Pi article. Also, I think TI will get a lot of applications for programmers. There are many excellent programmers that are active on ticalc.org's comment board alone.

amicek

The Pi article got Slashdotted. It would, logically enough, get lots of hits as a result.

--BlueCalx

Does anyone wonder what language they use for 89 programming?
Is it asm? I doubt it.
They are probably using their own little SDK that they should have released four months ago.

It's called M68000 Assembler, or M68K for short. It is a very common processor that was heavily used (and still is used) in many arcade machines and computers. It is ASM, just not of the z80 type. I wouldn't doubt that they will be using the SDK as they will be working for TI, thus meaning that they have access to documentation and who knows what... drool...

Man, if only I had some experience :(

AFAIK, the 89's operating system was coded entirely in C, which explains why the 3D graphing is much slower than the HP-49's (coded in Saturn ASM).

~ferich

do you guys have any more information on this?
maybe a website link or something?
does this require some specific college degree?
does it require moving to texas? (shudder)
or do they just want any idiot who can send in a resume?

Hey! What's wrong with Texas? :)

Lots of things.

Texas products are great , but people that manage the calculators division of TI are pirats , electronic engineers are under the order of these pirats . Maybe they fire all managers and programers and now they want to hire Real ones . TI rocks , and if not , it will .
LONG LIVE TI !

Sorry , I was hurry when I posted this , I though you were talking about Texas Instruments , but you were talking about Texas , (the state) -I can't give my opinion of an state I don't know....-I live in Uruguay-

Man.. I live in Texas, and even though i don't live in Dallas, where TI is located, i know that it is perfectly fine, and Texas is not the weird state infested with barbaric "cowboys" and constant indian raids. That was well over a century ago.

Someone told me once that, because Texas won its independance before the USA annexed it, Texas has the ability to become its own soverign nation.

I don't know how true this is, though.

It is true I took AP US History and the US was a little slow in annexing Texas.

It absolutely is not true. The Civil War proved that a state, once becoming a state, cannot secede from the Union.

The Confederation, BTW, is technically never considered to exist, and the Civil War is not officially recorded as such, but as the "Great Rebellion," if I remember correctly.

You can't secede, though (can you imagine the chaos that would cause, with each state threatening to secede for every little thing it didn't like?).

It IS true that Texas can become it's own nation. I learned this in gov. class. My teacher said that every year on the ballot there's a vote for becoming their own state. And a little trivia, Texas is the only state flag that can fly at the same height as the US flag. But somehow, I don't see how this relates at all to TI...but I'm bored and no one will probably read this.

The death penalty. :)

- Jeff

My roommate from last year was from Texas. He, and most Texan's I meet seem to be quite pompus people. It's probably from all the crap we give them. But I'd have to agree, nothing is worth moving to Texas for. =) heheheehehe

I haven't met any pompous Texas people. Lets not make generalizations here.

amicek

I'm from Texas, and people often are very stereotype when it comes to Texans...most people are not hicks or rednecks and just like everybody else in the US. Moving to Texas is pretty good for job opportunities, but is not so great for scenery (although some places are nice). I just don't think one should be so stereotype about the state, when most of who are making fun of Texas probably never been in the state.

Man, I lived in Texas all my life. Except for that one year where i went to New Hampshire (*shudder*). I am perfectly fine! I am not pompus or gay or cocky. As a matter of fact, Texas is the second most populated state( California is even more.. MAN I HATE THAT PLACE!) So i do not see anything wrong with Texas or the people living there.

People from texas are really stuck on themselves. I don't want to start anything. But I guess they are really proud of their state more than any other. :)~

maybe I'm wrong but i don't think too many people will want to program for calculators as a living once they're through college... I think that this opportunity is focused mainly on the the average high school/early college student.

You're probably right about that, TI isn't really big time coding.

But what does TI want programmers for? I was just thinking to myself today that TI does not develop anything but Flash apps, and TI leaves the program programming to the TI community. I wonder if they will just test new versions of the TI-OS?

all TI calculators are like the old computers , because they have Z80 and MC68000, and you can do a lot of thinks with these processor -even having the smallest amount of memory- ,
So , I don't think TI-OS is taking advantage of the processor . For example , I saw a HP49G doing a 3Dgraph .... 2 times faster than the TI89.... well , there are few things that can explain that , memory and the 3D engine program .HP49G uses NEC Saturn 4Mhz and it has 3 more registers than the Motorola 68000 , and some of them are 64bit (I don't know if this is a reason). But
motorola 68000 is a 16bit processor (Nec S is a 4 bit processor) , with 10/12 Mhz freq , and has 68000 transistors

So , It must be faster in all ways
Try to find out how many transistors NEC Saturn has ...

The m68k has 32 bit registers. I would love to work for TI, but I don't want to move to Texas :)

in 20/3 I start university , electronic engineer... 5 years , if I can I would be pleased to work in Texas Instruments , in the Calculator division <----this is my dream . Maybe I start designing a new TI calculator , what do you think ? Any suggestion ? What would be the calc of your dream ? told me , if my dream become possible , I will do this calc for you(us) !!!

The MC68000 processor is a 32 bit mind you.
But i agree that TI isn't making good use of the processor, cause the 68k processor in my opinion and in the opinion of most of my friends is old, but very efficent and powerful. As a matter of fact, i even heard someone state that The 68k processor could be even better than the x86(the standard for most PC's)

YES , MC68000 is very very powerful , I didn't know that it was a 32 bit processor , but I'm sure that NEC SAturn is a 4 bit processor (I saw it in the NEC specifications). I don't know how do you messure the bits of a processor , but I always though that a sega genesis is a 16 bit machine . Maybe the confution is in the registers , because of having a few 32 bit registers doesn't mean the processor is a 32 bit one . But I don't know , so please , can someone explain ?

MC68000 is internally a 32 bit processor, but it has a 16 bit data bus.

Yes, and the data bus determines what type of processor it is. So, although it has 32 bit registers, the processor can only handle 16 bits at a time, so technically it's a 16 bit processor. That's still good, compared to the 4 bit hp49g and the 8 bit Gameboy. Sega Genesis is 16 bit.

THANK YOU ! that what the explanation I was waiting for. I forgot about the
so , NEC Saturn is a 4 bit processor , Game boy has a 8 bit one , as the nintendo.
super nintendo and Sega Genesis are 16 bit machines
So , MC68000 is a 16bit processor , that's good .
It would be nice if it was a 32 bit one... anyway 16 bit is GOOD enough .

THANK YOU ! that what the explanation I was waiting for. I forgot about the Bus
so , NEC Saturn is a 4 bit processor , Game boy has a 8 bit one , as the nintendo.
super nintendo and Sega Genesis are 16 bit machines
So , MC68000 is a 16bit processor , that's good .
It would be nice if it was a 32 bit one... anyway 16 bit is GOOD enough .

What everyone seems to be forgetting about is the fact that the 68000 is used in the Palm computers. Actually, it's a slightly different processor called the Dragonball that is related to/is a 68000, but Motorola has hidden or never posted any information saying how the two are related, so if anyone knows, please tell me. In any case, the Palm really proves the power of the 68000 architecture, since they have a new version of the DragonBall running at 33Mhz, and the Palm is capable of some very impressive things including: Handwriting recognition, Full (256) color screen and programs, Web Browsing, 3D Rendering (seriously, someone ported OpenGL to the Palm) and quite a few other things. So actually, when it comes to new ideas in programming, I would say that the 68000 is probably the most active processor. Admittedly, what I really want is a job at Palm, not TI :)

That's alot of programming my friend. New ti-os's and all that flash programming. And new calculators. I'm sure there are lots of things that TI has plans of doing I'm guessing that because they are hiring programmers. (P.S. If someone gets in there set those TI people straight on programming for their calcs. ex AMS 2.03)

lol, my friend's dad works for TI...
I don't think he works with the calculators, though. :(

MC68000 it's 1979 design of Motorola , when it was released it became the most popular at the time , it is(was) used in many computers , as the first Apple Mac , Atari ST , etc . It IS used in the sega Genesis and the popular arcade machines of capcom , neo geo , sega system16 , etc .

So , I think there are MANY people programing this Processor . the same goes for Z80 .

Sega Genesis? Really? Wow, I didn't realize that it was THAT good of a processor :-P

Genesis has a 12 mhz MC68000 processor as a main processor, and it also has a 6 or 4 mhz(i forgot) Z80 processor to control the sound. Some people claim they can make an emulator for the genesis on the 92+ because of the striking hardware similarities, but the calc can run only the smaller roms, and they would be pretty slow due to emulation of the machine...

The MC68000 processor has many uses, early computers used this processor and some computers nowadays still use the RISC processor, which is a decendant of the origonal 68k, i think....

You're wrong.

perhaps, but remember I said *not too many* as opposed to no one... anyways, I was specifically referring to calculator programming, not the z80 processor in general.

hehe - and if _anyone_ has sent their resume to TI already, it's Kirk. I highly doubt they would hire a student to program calcs - they require not only programming talent, but a LOT of math background, too. I also imagine a formal education and possibly some industrty experience is required - you need to have a LOT of experience with parsing, evaluating, binary trees, etc, which I doubt that a self-taught programmer usually fully understands.

To quote Jonah, "Kirk is in like 10th level calculus or something." And he does have a fantastic knowledge of how the TI works - Tisshot proved that if anything :)

--BlueCalx

. . . and he stalks Pat Milherson in his free time. He knows everyone at TI by first name =)

TISShot doesn't show anything about his knowledge of calcs - it shows his knowledge of VTI.

On the other hand, Chmasc/Pterodactyl/other stuff shows that he probably understands the 86 ROM better than anyone else who's never seen the original source.

Amen