I've read quite a bit of the responces to this new ROM and I have to say that public feedback and support would be one thing that could make this the best damned thing to happend to any TI. Giving your comments and suggestions makes it certain that it's not going to be some peice of crap that some corp. made without even talking to the public. It'll be OUR rom. with that said. I have just a couple quick suggestions.

I don't play with the calculator for math, or even for games! I play with it just to program anything. When I'm bored, thats what I do. I havn't done much in the way of ASM programming because there is no way to program ASM and compile it from the calc. This is a definate must. So people won't need to download and install everything to their computer in order to program, they can code, compile, test, and do it all over again.

Basic could be sped up a little bit w/ ASM code (I agree that coding this in C wouldn't do it any g00d).

I'm guessing that since the prosit god is working on this, theres a posibility for some multitasking TI programs! That would simply well.. to put it plainly.. rock!

Inclusion of ALL the TI-OS features would probaly be a big plus, because they are all there for a reason. If you don't include one funtion, feature, command, whatever.. SOMEONE will be upset. If you want a true revolution, you'd have to include everything and add to it.

A crash recovery kinda nthing would be nice. instead of resetting your calc, there could maybe be a key sequence (like CTRL-ALT-DEL) that would let you halt the faulty program or something.

and last but not least.. Don't rush!! Don't worry about getting 'something to the public ASAP' .. I myself don't enjoy downloading something and having it not be complete, or having it be unstable. Take your time, do everything right, and make it stable as posible and just give us a picture every once and a while .. pictures never hurt no 1 x=)

Thats all for my suggestions. Good luck to you!

D.Nite

>>Don't rush!! Don't worry about getting 'something to the public ASAP' .. I myself don't enjoy downloading something and having it not be complete, or having it be unstable. Take your time, do everything right, and make it stable as posible and just give us a picture every once and a while .. pictures never hurt no 1 x=)

I agree 100%

The idea for a new Os is WONDERFUL..magnificent in fact. You all have great ideas and all, personally i'm not a programmer but i do understand what you people are talking about and it seems to me that for this project to ever get off the ground, YOU NEED TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE PERSON WHO INITIALIZED IT. Another words there is lack of organization and cooperation. All of you who are posting all these ideas should speak w/the French guy or the staff of TIcalc or who ever and form some kind of commity so you can be organized. That will get you off to a start at least.Instead of all this posting of messeges. This is just a suggestion that i think should be considered by all of you who are programmers and think you can make this work.

Well, I'm not very active in the TI community these days, but if someone can find a way of replacing the TI-89/92+ ROM possible, I'd be happy to help with the project. I had considered the idea before, but it was far too large a project to do on my own... :-)

The main problem is finding a way to install the ROM on the TI-89. The hardware 2.00 versions don't have the Flash-ROM bug that let's you write to Flash directly. Therefore the only way to install a new OS ROM is to use TI's ROM update system. Unfortunately, TI uses an RSA algorithm (I think) to digitally sign their ROM updates, to protect against people distributing altered ROMs which could permanently lock up the calculator (in theory - in practice, I think all the Flash calculators have a small amount of PROM containing the Flash-ROM updating code, so even if a new OS locked up your calculator, it should still be possible to re-install the original OS - the TI-83+ has this protection, anyway).

If a new OS is to be made for the TI-89, either a way around the Flash-ROM protection has to be found, or TI's ROM signature needs to be cracked. Neither of these tasks are very easy (although given the small amount of time it takes the calculator to check the ROM signature, I can't imagine the signature being very large - certainly no more than 128-bits I'd have thought). I don't think TI will be all that happy if someone cracks their signature, either...

Anyway, I wish those working on this project good luck! It's a beautiful idea - an open source calculator OS! Let's just hope that TI doesn't get too upset...

I remember sth like a 512 bits rsa encryption key...
But someone on ti-fr spoke about the possiblity of sending this rom progressively (a program on the calc would receive it and write it to the rom, using the same method as hw2patch)

Hmmm, I'd forgotten about hw2patch...
You're right - I've just been fiddling with my 83+ and managed to erase and write directly to pages of Flash. Scarily, it looks like it's possible to write to the serial number storage area (which could render the calculator useless!), although obviously I didn't try this... I hope there's some hardware protecting it - I expect there is...

Now, I wonder if I can hack together an 83+ OS... :-)

Please, go right on ahead...we 83+ users need something to talk about!

ASimPerson

By making the calculator flashable, TI made it's hardware accesible as a platform for other firms. It would be a simple matter to sue TI for disclosure of the checksums and other information regarding writing roms for the hardware. (read: memory addresses and the like)

The only possible defense that could be raised by TI, is that opening this information would damage their business. However, as they have actively redone the hardware they have proven that they are unwilling for even the user to know whats behind the curtain. This does not show a guard of propietary information, this shows an attempt to keep any potential competition to a limit.

I think a court case would be good to pursue. Does anyone know a lawyer who would work pro bono, though? I don't think any attorney would give me a laughing glance. A 16 year old kid walks into the offices of Schlup, Schlep, and Stein. "I want to pursue a lawsuit against a calculator company. They are mucho diablo!"

it appears that TI is trying the microsoft way of business
and, yes, no lawyer would take one teenager seriously, and certainly would not take the case for free, but last i checked, TI is using the very same monopolistic strategies that microsoft used, only with better success...until now
the three ways that I can think of to get the source code for the AMS:
1) anonymous tip to the FTC that TI is using monopolistic practices and wait for the trial to end
2) class action lawsuit against TI
3) internal espionage

Ted's 0.16 bits

4)Hack AMS 2.01 or 2.02 since TI claims it's not theirs, they couldn't do anything to us for decompiling it!
5)Hack any of the AMS's in a foriegn country where TI can't do $Hlt about it!

Read more at the bottom of the page.

Cavan

Can´t you make a compiler for the TI?
so you can programm gamers or programms in ASM on the TI that should be really really fine!

And.... don´t forget the TI-92+ while programming

do you know as92? a program which allow you to compile asm on-calc
and db92, too, an on-calc debugger (disassembles, shows registers, etc...)

I think you should be able to customize your OS from the computer then send it to the calc. Say I don't need some of the functions (right now) and want to have moe memory. You could choose what functions you want to remove from the computer and it compiles the new rom and sends it to the calc. I think this could create a lot more space on the calc.

kernel customiztion

ive read some people asking about getting the source from ti. people think that this is a really bad i dea because ti will probably deny the request and shove us aside. what if everyone signed a petition for the source and see what they say. all we want is the freedome to use our calculators the way we want so they realy have no reason to not give it to us because they arent loosing anything and if they decide that they dont like our programs then they will just change the os anyway. then we would have t ask for it again :)

That would be like windows users petitioning Microsoft to make it open source. It would never happen. These organizations have a lot of laywers who would have their asses if the source code to the rom ever leaked.

That would be like windows users petitioning Microsoft to make it open source. It would never happen. These organizations have a lot of laywers who would have their asses if the source code to the rom ever leaked. One idea is for one of us to work of them and then steal and carefully distrubute the source code.

TI should hire some of the craziest nerds of the TI community to work with the engineers and make everybody happy, but then, that doesn't seem to be of any concern to TI.

Seems like TI's only concern these days is DSP.

- Jeff

The man is never satisfied. Many calculators (ex. CASIO) even do not have machine code programming.

Well, TI's do, and that's why we do all these crazy things with them!