Anyone else notice how the TI-89 is being de-emphasized? New versions of BigDyna, Queue, Yapt, JezzBall, FallDown, SameGame, MegaCar, Collection of Classic Text Adventures, TICT eBook Reader, FlashShell Explorer, and Rusty's Ultimate Solitaire in recent times and we keep getting news of TI-83+ programs!

I'm with you on that one Jon, the 89 is getting shafted lately. Those should be combined into a big post about games getting ported to AMS 2.0x. There's some great stuff coming out of TICT lately as well.

Yeah, I can't wait until the TICT file explorer comes out! TICT's programs are always bug free and it has a lot of features too, like eBook compatibility.

<@PatrickD> ticalc.org seems biased against the 86 these days


gotta wonder why patrick would be the one to notify ticalc about it :/

It may, though I don't know, have to do with who sends emails to news@ticalc.org, and who doesn't. Also, just about all the programs you mentioned got news items when they were originally released (or ported to said calculator). Updates are much less likely to get news items than the first program/port.

I agree about how updates aren't always as important as new programs, but given the volume and the past news of updates, in addition to the increased compatibilities of these programs I think that it merits a news item.

I agree, I happen to have an 86 and an 89, and a VTI 83+, and The 89 is by far the best of all the calcs, better games, better math, and although it isn't allowed on the ACT, the swap trick (putting it in an 83+ case) is not too difficult once you've become familiar with your 89 button arrangement. The 89 costs at the most $50 more that the 83+ and I think that if ticalc and other sites promoted it more, people would buy it.

What I wonder is whether the source of the problem is at TiCalc or at TI headquarters. TI seems to be promoting the 83+ in all it's inferior glory by mass producing it and making a "special edition" which they tout as the greatest of all calcs. A "massive" 1.5 megs is still smaller than the 2 megs of flash rom in the 89. The 89 just has an 1.2 meg OS.

TI also seems to be discouraging the 86, which is almost as good as an 89, it's got a full 128k ram, and aside from that, it has better math capabilities, but TI doesn't want to make an 86+. I can't help but wonder why. The 86+ is the only thing that might possibly be better than an 89.

I've also noticed that there are some new TI-83+ flash apps that emulate the 86's built-in features (differential equations graphing, polynomial root finder, and simultaneous equation solver).

It looks like TI is trying to turn the 83+ into a replacement for the 86.

Now that you mention it, they are. Now I see wy there is no 86+. They would rater release apps that emulate built in functions of the 86. Once they release a flash app that makes the menu system nifty 86 style, and enlarges the screen, their job will be complete. The simultanous solver app I must question though. It's a waste of space, all systems of equations can be solved by the rref function. Why are them making a smultaneous solver for both the 83+ and the 89?

Correction on my last post: When I said the 86 has better math capabilities, I was comparing to the 83+, not the 89, although the 86 does have support for base 8, and a lot of conversion stuff.

well ti did make applets for the ti86 that did the statistic stuff of the 83.

I do like this direction ti is going in: They have stopped building artificial differences between the calcs by amking one "good at statistics" and the other "good at calculus%2

How exactly do you do the 'swap trick' you mentioned. (hehe!)

As off-topic as this is getting, just a couple of comments...
I don't think TI is claiming that the TI-83 Plus Silver will be "the greatest of all calcs". As a matter of fact, find me one place and where TI says that the TI-83 Plus SE will be "better" than the TI-89, and I'll go sit in a bog or something. The point is that the TI-83 Plus SE is meant for people who would normally buy a TI-83 Plus, but want more "stuff". It's not meant for people who would normally buy a TI-89.

On another note, as for "A "massive" 1.5 megs is still smaller than the 2 megs of flash rom in the 89," the TI-83 Plus SE has a 2 megabyte flash chip just like the TI-89. The 1.5 megabyte number is for the amount of free flash that can be used to store applications/data.

I always write too much, but just one last thing. "The 89 costs at the most $50 more that the 83+ and I think that if ticalc and other sites promoted it more, people would buy it." The vast majority of calculator sales are made by people who have never visited ticalc.org. They are made by high school students who are told by their math teachers that they should buy such and such a calculator (generally a TI-83 or Plus). You could go and try to convince every math departement in the country to support the TI-89 over the TI-83, but the point is that for the average user the TI-83 is a better choice.

Or as in my case, I had to get an 83 Plus. It was required for my algebra studies. My teacher suggested no lower, and definently no higher. The TI-83 Plus was originally designed for algebra (1 and 2), therefore teachers are encouraging people to buy them and not others. As for me, I'm planning to get an 89 for my Junior year in high school. I will also be getting the TI-83 Plus SE as soon as it comes out.

As for the 86, I think that, though it may be a good calculator, TI is sticking with the two that it needs. The 83 series for algebra and the 89 for above. For college, you'd want to get a 92 Plus or something like that, but I think that the 83 and the 89 are the only two calculators REALLY needed for high school.

"For college, you'd want to get a 92 Plus or something like that, but I think that the 83 and the 89 are the only two calculators REALLY needed for high school."

That's funny, I got all the way through high school with 'only' an 82, and most people older than me had to work with even less. Furthermore, most of my college math classes don't even allow you to use calcs, so I don't really see the point of spending hundreds of dollars on calculators, other than they make really cool toys. :)

A TI-82? Dude. :) I couldn't survive without a TI-83 Plus. Are you the guy who made Bleeding eyes?
I never know about it! I have never even played Final Fantasy (though I've heard of it), but I like it a whole lot. What do all the things mean below the Allocate: 30 status?

A TI-92 or 92 Plus seems too big to haul around. I'd prefer an 89, but that's just me.

--NATE

Alex Highsmith is the guy who made Dying Eyes and many of the Final Fantasy games out there, and he goes by the nickname "Kurai", which has no relation whatsoever to my name. :)

I know. I know. It's actually Dying Eyes. I accidentally called it Bleeding Eyes above... :P

The only change in yapt is that it is now nostub. But thanks for considereing it significant. My goal with it was to completely out do the ti83+ periodic table flash app.

And thanks to Flavien Racine for the adaptions.


-Samuel Stearley

Hey, yapt is awesome. Excellent Chemistry AP time-saver. The porting of programs to higher AMS versions and C is a big thing for us. I hate shells with capital letters and exclamation points.

I should have made it nostub sooner. With teos and universalOS it is impossible to execute yapt from a shell lauched by shift-on. (this bug is due to the fact that there is no end of estack tag on the estack so the count argument call throws an error.)

And teos and doorsos outright interfere with returning the computated molar mass to the history. The calc would crash when you exited yapt. This wasted a lot of my time on the debugger.

And for those interested I am writing a nostub event hook that does the shift-on thing.


-Samuel

Yeah, yapt is a great program and it sounds like it was indeed an important update. Nostub programs help decrease dependencies on shells.