Wow, I really should have taken one of my friends seriously. Several months ago she was telling me how TI was going to make a new calculator. She said it would be the TI-83 Plus 2. At the time, I figured that would be unrealistic. You'd think that a TI-86 Plus would've been first. But, months later, she was right.

It helps living 10 miles from TI, you get leaked rumors quickly.

I agree on the TI-86+. It is long overdue for an update. I just hope if/when it comes out I don't have to buy another graphlink to get it.

What would be nice is if calc's had a cradle and link port similiar to Palm Pilots. My Visor came with a nice USB cradle. Just plug it in, install the software, press the button, and it works, everytime, no hassles. Maybe a USB Graph Link would solve the problem...

I wonder what kind of math a TI83++ (as I think it should be called) will be able to do? Judging by a previous comment that said the two calculators (83+ and 83++) were compatible with each other both in assembly and basic, I'm lead to believe that the functionality is the same. Unless it's got more math power then my 89, then I'm not buying one. I can't believe I'm saying this, but the reason I bought my 89 was to help me with Calc 1. Don't get me wrong; I've got a very serious chunk of its memory filled with high quality games, but the main reason I bought it was for the math functions. It's saved my ass many a time. Now if they made an 89+ with 2 megs of flashrom, with no hardware asm limitation, and they actually debounced the keys, I'd be in calculator heaven =)
[end rant]

The functionality is exactly the same between the two calculators. With 1.5 MB of application space, and a 15 MHZ CPU one could write some pretty advanced math functionality as an application, but the TIOS will be virtually identical.

We should call it a TI-82+++. This is really a super-turbocharged TI-82 on crack. :-)

Well, this is because you have a HW2, i was lucky, i bought one of the LAST HW1's from best buy. You're right about high quality games. Soon, they're gonna release a game called ChronoFantasy, a KICK@$$ RPG. The 83 will always have very primitave games. Although they may be large in amount, they are all not as good as 89 games.

Just what is so bad about HW2 calcs? I thought they were supposed to be faster. I never have any problems with mine.

The problem with HW2 calcs is that they have a built in mechanism to stop Doors OS(or a cheap clone) from supressing the 8/24 KB ASM limitation, which was a completely useless present on behalf of the wonderful folks at TI-HQ (who, might I add, have decided to release yet ANOTHER 82 based calc BEFORE the 86+). They say that the limitation is to prevent flash app piracy. Wait a minute, how? why? Anyways, there are several ways of bypassing the limitation, I use a hacked AMS 2.03 tib. Because 2.04 and 2.05 have some random problems with some games. if you need either a hacked/unhacked TIB for absolutely anything, e-mail me at dflesch6@hotmail.com

How about the rom patch utility that removes that flaw and make nearly all AMS 2.00 asm programs work on the hw2 89 nearly flawlessly? Hell, even tetris works now.

Screw new Ti-apps. 94 apps is just an example of the amount of REDICULOUS MEMORY this thing will have....thats...emm...almost 10 times more than a normal 83 plus! yeah..wait...carry the 3...aww, forget it. do you know what that means? i can have alien breed 2, zelda, punchout, AND all my other games, and i STILL wont have to garbage collect for a month! its insane! wait a sec...doesnt the game boy advance come out in july.....GAHHHHH! NOOO! i might be able to save up 150 bucks in 6 months, but not 300!! why must fate be so cruel! what am i going to have to sell current 83+?! wait, good idea *jots down*. hell, i'd sell my precious (but rarely used) N64. aww..well, i got 6 months almost..you all comment if ya like. The world is made...of love and peace!

Speaking of Garbage collecting....
After that year of not garbage collecting, how long do you think it will take to gabage collect? 15 minutes? 30 minutes? A day? Possibly a year? 160Kb is enough to garbage collect now, but 1.5Mb will be absolutely ridiculous!

You may be on to something there. Even with the high quality 12 MHz in my 89, garbage collection goes no faster than my 83+, If one actually manages to fill this new calculator to the max, or just unarchive and rearchive too much, one will be out of a calc for let's see.....1 minute for 160k, 2 for about 300, 6 for 900, roughly 10 minutes for garbage collection of all archive memory. Just hope this doesn't happen during math class, or it will become a necessity to have a basic $5 calc on hand in emergencies.

While on the subject, once you upgrade to AMS 2.x the 89 has about 750k of flash ROM, and this seems to be far too small. If TI has the burning desire to create another calc before the long awaited 86+ (which had better show up SOON), perhaps an 89 plus would be in order. Then I can keep my e-books, all 33 text adventures, and some high quality games on all at the same time. I tremble at the thought

I repeat this over and over again. The 89 has 2 megs of Flash ROM, but it's the complex AMS that eats up about 1000-1200k of memory. And remember that the 89 has 256k of RAM, and the 83 will still have about 24k. In the mem box, it will display 190k this is because the AMS needs memory to run.

I know that this has been discussed many times before, but wouldn't the ams take up a lot less space and run a lot faster if TI wrote it in 68000 assembly, rather than C? Although it would be harder and slower to write and debug, it would be much appreciated by the TI community, because it would give us at least a small gain in available archive space and a significant gain in execution rates.

<wishful_thinking>Perhaps sometime TI will release an 89+ or similarly named model that has more archive space and possibly even the screen from the 92/92+, although that would require using a wider case (but hopefully a vertically aligned one, rather than the horizontally aligned cases of the 92/92+)</wishful_thinking>

You're wrong. It will only garbage collect the space that's been used, and even if it did Garbage Collect it all, remember 16 (is that right?) Mhz it's got, speeding up the process. I beleive that if at all longer, it'll only be a few seconds longer.

--NATE

This is sad. Calculators are no longer math machines, they're now becoming full computers. I remember reading an article on Slashdot a few months ago that detailed the plans by HP to make a calculator with an MP3 player. With so much power and memory, the 83+ silver will give programmers a reason to become sloppy with their programs. I long for the good ole days when I used pen and paper to take notes in class and write down my schedule.

that makes me wonder... is the new calc fast enough to decode mp3s? 1.5meg would be enough to hold a decent sized sound file :)

unfortunately, without a chip designed specifically for MP3 decoding, you need something like a 60 MHz pentium, which translates to more like a 100 MHz Z80. It could be conceivable though if the 89 plus I mentioned earlier ever becomes more than thought candy. Provided they meef it up to at least 50 MHz or more.

Can't the 89 be overclocked in a manner similar to the z80-based calculators, with similar percentage increases in clock speed? If so, this would give someone with a HW2 calculator a 48MHz 68000 chip.

MP3 wouldn't be possible. But there are programs in existance that can play 11kHz mono sounds (I think). You'd have to modify one to read from flash, and it should work.