Anyone else notice that this *beta* software is more alpha quality? I know many beta programs that are more stable than this.... hell alpha linux kernels are more stable than this

This junky thing has crashed on me every time I have opened it!

Some alpha testers had problems because they were running the SDK with a poor Java interpreter - download version 1.3 of the Java2 interpreter from the Sun site if you haven't already.

Other than that, if you're running Win95/98 and you actually did reboot after installation (yes, it's important here), then you're out of luck.

Hm, I've been having the same problem there. I already have J2 1.3 though (from making custom cars for Carmageddon2). Perhaps the full version *might* be a wee bit more stable.

In the documentation isn't the section on flash apps vs assembly programs funny?

Majority of the limitations of asm are deliberate. But what is annoying is that ti acts like the ability to make flash apps is a god send.

Some limitations do not exist like the system overide- it says code may move during garbage collection so this is not possible- as if we do not know how to allocate memory, copy code to that memory, and lock the handle.

But here is my favorite line in the section:

"No — ASM programs have no OS-supported shared-code interface."

Exactly- we have kernels.


I could gather that TI did not like what the 89 programmers have been doing, but I thought they were only minorly annoyed. So let hacking and the open OS continue and screw Texas Instruments. I got my 89 to program and I am going to program it.



-Samuel Stearley

Well, I browsed a bit through a SDK documentation. It is much better than in alpha release (what is natural), but anyway, I need to warn anybody:

DON'T BELIEVE TOO MUCH IN THIS DOCUMENTATION IF YOU WANT TO USE THESE INFORMATION FOR PROGRAMMING WITH TIGCC!

There are several reasons for this:

1) Generally, the most information in this doc is true only on AMS 2.xx, but a lot of programmers still use AMS 1.xx.
2) Very often, TI says that the routine is "Available on all versions of the TI-89 / TI-92 Plus", but actually, it is available only on AMS 2.03 or greater. I informed TI about this, but no reply. As SDK works only with AMS 2.04 or greater, they obviously don't care about this.
3) Even when the routine exists on AMS 1.xx (like SymFindFirst, DialogAdd, etc.) many optional flags mentioned in the documentation works only with recent versions of the AMS.

To conclude: if you program with TIGCC, use only what is described in TIGCC doc. I will update this doc in the near future, now I need not to be silent any more.

Another topic: have anybody noticed that it is very hard to use SDK for making programs which do not look like TI built-in applications (i.e. the toolbar on the top of the screen, etc.)? There is not anything like clrscr(), nor any function from graph.h there. So, I will give one challenge to programmers who use SDK: make a program which will clear the whole screen, display a "Hello world" at the top of the screen, and draw the diagonal line accross the whole screen. Note that this is not impossible with tools given in SDK, but anyway, try to do it...

<I>To conclude: if you program with TIGCC, use only what is described in TIGCC doc. I will update this doc in the near future, now I need not to be silent any more. </I>

I think most of us ARE wainting for that...

about your example... it's a little too academic... what's the use of that anyway?

I just want to say that you will have a lot of problems to make anything which occupies a whole screen (read games): it is very hard to make an application using the SDK which does not exactly look like TIOS built-in applications (e.g. which does not have a toolbar menu on the top on the screen, etc.).

You can just leave:

ATTR(OO_APP_DEFAULT_MENU, &AppMenu )

out of the FRAME and it'll not have a menu. Then you have a 2 pixel border around the edge, while some might not like it, if you leave that window there, it'll make game programming easy. With windows for instance, theres automatic clipping, so theres no need for having an extensive clipped sprite routine as this is already done... There's one aspect that is usefull.

I'll agree that TIGCC is great for programming games.... But this SDK is the only way (currently) to program a Flash application. This is what I waited so long for this SDK for. The ability to program Flash apps.

> it'll make game programming easy

Windowed routines are tooooo slow.

I completely agree that SDK is the only way (currently) to program a Flash application. But, it is simply too expensive for me (note that I am living in a country with very low standard). By the way, I can modify TIGCC in one day to be able to create flash apps (it is only necessary to change linker a bit), but as flash apps must be signed, TI has a monopole over them (i.e. they will not sign any flash app which is not created with the SDK). And, if I understand correctly, the SDK itself is free. Ability of signing is what must to be paid for.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you here; I wrote a peaworm proof-of-concept demo when we first got the SDK. While it isn't as fast as it would be with TI-GCC, usign TI's routines to do a full-screen game sure was easy enough. I'll update and release the demo as soon as I can figure out why it runs on the sim, but not a real calc =(

BTW, I even don't need to ask if it works under Linux... It's obvious TI doesn't know about Linux as a lot of people... It makes me mad :(
Now that I got TIGCC working under Linux (even better than under windows :p ), I don't see myself switching back to windows for devel anyway (I still wonder if one can really WORK under wincrash... )

Can you put TIGCC for Linux on Web? I was looking for somethig like this
(because I have no time to make it myself). Thanx a lot

My 89 will send things to my computer via Graph Link perfectly. My computer will send things to my 89 via Graph Link perfectly. However my 89 is having problems sending to a friend's 89. What could be the problem?
89s are rare enough I can't find another one to link to to see if my calc is messed up.