wow, first. Umm, I've downloaded the game, and I found it pretty good - the most vexing thing is the size (I can't play it when I have all my normal programs loaded because of the 12 bytes or something they take even when archived. The other annoying thing I found was that the screen is very small - overall, maybe 1/2 to 2/3 the size of the whole screen, and considering the resolution, it can make it a bit tough sometimes. Nonetheless, its a nicely done game, I recommend it, and I'd keep it if I could play it on my calc.

stupid reply to myself dealie - I forgot some stuff.

After taking my bro's calc to test it on, I wrote a letter to TI, which got their basic canned response, but the gist of it was "the stuff you're releasing, such as the keyboard, is all great, but give us 83/83+ users what we really want - more RAM, somehow - either a plug in unit, or a deal where we can send our calcs in to TI so more RAM could be installed." Anyway, its possible we could start a petition of 83/83+ users to show how many of us there are that want this, I guess. Anyone up for it?

I guess so

Sure, yeah.

I'm not sure it will work, but count me in.

Sure, and I was also working on something to convince them to build an external 16 color screen with twice the resolution of the ordinary TI83+(SE) LCD. (2x resolution, but same size) It would plug into the linkport, and would flip over the old screen. (so its detachable. Shell integrations would make it easy to use the new screen in programs. Wouldn't that be sweet?

Sounds cool! I am building a link protocol from scratch for connecting all sorts of hardware devices, called TICI 1.0 (website: www.TICI.tk). I don't have a whole lot up on that site yet, but www.DoorsXP.tk is coming along, a page devoted to Doors XP. In case you haven't heard yet, Doors XP is a mulitasking GUI similar to Windows that can recognize practically any TI calculator file type. For More Info, go to www.DoorsXP.tk or click ^^Web Page^^ above.

Pardon me for my ignorance - but has DoorsXP been released or what?
What's the status?
It looks awesome :)

It's undergoing testing right now. It should come out sometime in September, or so I heard.

Cool! Sounds like USB!

I guess.
Higher resolution would be nice for programs/apps like Graph3, but color isn't necessary...

I'd say it's the other way round, 'cos more colors will give the illusion of more pixels, when used in a good way.
Anyway, you should realize that any kind of extra display ability, more pixels or more colors, would require more memory. A 16 color picture would require 4 times as much memory as a b/w picture of the same size. If you also want to double the display depth, that would mean 8 times as much memory. The current size of a picture on the Ti-83(+)(SE) is something around 765 bytes if I am correct, so one picture would take up 6120 bytes with that new display of his. No good idea without a great deal of memory expansion.

Just my thoughts.

I dont think it would go fast enough. Because you are hooking up the screen to the link port, you are limited to the connection speed of the link port. It takes about 1/3 of a second to transfer a monochrome picture through the link port. If you are dealing with a color screen, the picture is several times bigger. You would probably have 8 bit color; that it, 8 bits for each pixle while black and white is one bit (1, on, 0,off) Hence, you would have pictures 8 times bigger. In all, it would mean that you would have at most 1 every 2 or 3 seconds. Plus, to compute this, would take much cpu power. As we already see, black and white games already take all the power the cpu has (this game in this board is not even full screen!) so you can imagine the slow speeds of a color game. To everything in life there is a balance; speed VS graphics is a such balance; having color outweighs speed in this case. But color would be cool.

A new (built in) display driver might be a solution to that, but it's still not as easy as "Hey, let's put a new display on our Ti".
If you have to replace the display, the displaydriver, add more memory and port every program ever written, just to get colors, I'd say: get yourself a laptop.

if your gonna spend the money for the screen, why not have the color? no color is too much like normal

I think they should release a new calculator (Ti-8000 or something like that) with all sorts of features like color and touchscreen (like the newer PDAs) Plus make it have support for those big memory slots used in those devices ( you could have over 1gb of space)

~ Then you'ld have to make the programs/games compatable W/ color, y'see.?!!- and, the processor might/will not recognize the source codes for color!

-Something to think about.

cooommme oooon, you knoow I'm riiight.

Well, it could work... and by the way...

I AM BACK FROM MY VACATION! OH YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is possible to change the calc's display - you can use max. 120x64 with your current display driver. But it is also possible to add one more driver (Toshiba t6c04). The maximum resolution is then 240x64.

Just wondering ... how would one add another display driver to the calc?

Look at display driver's documentation (URL above)

It is not very easy to add another driver, and you may destroy your calc if you make a mistake!

I only get an Error 403 Forbidden ... what's with that? How'd you see it?

Try new URl. Click on 'Search by keywords / product number', then search for t6a04. It will give you table with one result. Click on PDF icon.

Enjoy 240x64 display :-)

You mean your computer montior changes to 240x64 display? Is it fixable?

Yes, it makes hardware changes to your monitor. It disables all resolutions except of 240x64.

So how would one add it to the calc?

Did you read the documentation ?

I can't give you detailed instructions. You have to read documentation, open your calc, make some 'reverse engineering', use brain, www.google.com, and soldering iron...

You will have to solve many problems (for example how to fit so large display into so small calculator:). I can't explain everything step by step (I would have to write a book).

I haven't try to add second disp driver, but I'm going to do it so I'll send you mail with some instructions when finished, OK ?

(uff)

I definately think that it would be tough to do, considering the link structure... <flashback to science experiment with link cables> and I can see a memory problem, but if (big if) TI re-wrote the OSes of the 83+ and 83+SE, then the SE could use its extra ram, and TI could modify the OS to take advantage of these new color capabilities. First, a compression codec for pictures, like a 'smart' codec that checks and sees which way (vert, horiz, etc.) would provide optimal compression, and compress graphics ASM style. 4-layer greyscale pix take up less than 1500 bytes, so it could be possible. Another thing is (and this would definately make the screen price shoot through the roof) RAM for the screen. It could buffer sprites or pix in advance, and display them more rapidly <fantasy of watching a crappy little 16 color movie on a $115 calculator with a $40 (or possibly much more) modification instead of real TV (w. sound) on a $50 color TV> Maybe the screen could have speakers, too! <16 color Phoenix with sound fx fantasy> While they're at it, maybe TI could find the meaning of life, the Holy Grail, and how to understand women, 'cause a 16-color screen/speaker set just ain't gonna happen. <Hopes thst reverse psychology/jinxing really does work> BTW - The NES version of Kirby (with some modifications) could be played on this screen.

YES!!!!! I'm (almost) desperate! With my 83+ SE having 10 apps and 108 programs (not including all my hidden games), I am desperate for more RAM space! Go to www.petitiononline.com or someplace and start a petition! Anybody!

You only have 108? I've got everything in the ion section on mine!

the SE has 92kbytes of RAM. Its just that TI hasent released a OS that will allow you to use it yet (compatibility thing)

Medevo

ummm. I think it was 96KB.

Why the heck would this be something fixed by a petition? You get what you pay for.

Someone needs to develope a hardrive for the TI-83+!

... like the SE...

no, NOT like the SE. While its great that it has 10x more Flash ROM than the normal 83+ there is NO difference in the RAM - the same 24k, which isn't always enough!

>> Someone needs to develope a hardrive for the TI-83+!


that's the comment i replied to, buddy... if a hardrive is now the correct term for 'RAM' then i need a book of "computer terms that dummies use"

expandable RAM slot is more like it.

true, true. What you have to remember is that on a lot of handheld devices (calcs and palms, for example), RAM functions for both RAM and storage (Dynamic RAM and Storage RAM.) You're of course technically correct in saying that the calcs don't have a hard drive (although the flash is pretty close), but I seriously doubt that a hard drive would be an efficient solution. (See comment on addressing above)

you know, all we need is a compact flash card thingy for our calculators
then we get a ibm microdrive or wutever size card we can afford, cf cards come in all sizes it would be perfect and fast enuf to be used as ram

it's never enough

Yeah, someone's always going to be complaining about it.

Technically, the SE has 96k (IIRC, it might be more) of RAM. The OS is the same as the normal 83+s, so it can't see the extra RAM, but it is still there. This is how you can have two saved states of your calculator on it via Virtual Calc. It just swaps in a new RAM page if I understand it correctly. TI will probably release a new version of the OS that actually looks for multiple RAM pages instead of assuming one.

:O

Weeeelll......if you're right, would it be possible to write an APP or something that would unlock the extra 72k of RAM?

Do you mean an App that will "convince" the OS there is more RAM? This is highly unlikely, because the whole OS is made with the assumption there is only 32 KB of RAM.
However, it IS possible (already done) to make Apps that use the extra RAM for other purposes. V-Calc uses it for a virtual calc, Omnicalc does the same and adds a restoreMem() function.

Correct. It has 128 KB of RAM, which is 96 KB that sits unused. It's easy to add RAM, but it can't be integrated into the OS. However it would be definitely possible to add into MirageOS or another shell the ability to move programs into this extended RAM area and run them from there. This doesn't mean it will happen though, since I don't even know if MirageOS 2.0 will ever get released nor have I discussed this idea with Dan or Jason yet. Of course Omnicalc uses these extra RAM pages, but I really don't care if that was broken to allow extra RAM since I don't even like Omnicalc anymore anyway...the TI-OS has too many idiosyncracies...

Err I immediately realized it's *idiosyncrasies :)

Umm... (excuse my poor vocabulary) what does that mean? ;-)

idˇiˇoˇsynˇcraˇsy Pronunciation Key (d--sngkr-s)
n. pl. idˇiˇoˇsynˇcraˇsies
1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group.
2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity.
3. An unusual individual reaction to food or a drug.

Oooooookay. Guess you learn something new every day.

*zips to DS message boards and posts the suggestion, and e-mails MIrage developers*

umm...why does the TI-OS having too many idiosyncracies make you not like omnicalc anymore?

lol having written zero TI-OS integration programs I can answer that. First of all, the TI-OS is poorly optimized. (You'd almost think it was written in C.) Second, there's too much "pomp" to it. For example, there's a status monitor that tells the calc what mode it's in. There are RAM locations dedicated to very odd things.

I'm not making myself clear am I? oh well. You really have to program it to get the feeling I'm trying to express. Its almost like they make the calc have too much "management" and not enough "engineers"

I'll shut up now;)

Because probably 20% of the code ended up being the actual routines, and 80% was the stuff to prevent the OS from crashing. Furthermore I keep getting bug reports that I can never seem to duplicate. Omnicalc never crashes, it's the OS that crashes because it doesn't like something that Omnicalc is doing. I'm just sort of ranting here....better to write a separate OS than try and add features.

Mirage has crashed many times on my calc. Its a good OS, but it crashes usually on a regular basis for me.

Aren't we supposed to be discussing Gemini?

technically speaking, it could be rather difficult to add RAM. For example, the TI-83+ SE actually has twice the RAM in two cards. Only one card can be "addressed" at a time. The difficulty lies in the method of addressing. The TI-83+ uses 16 bit addressing, so 2^16 (or 65536) bytes are addressable. I know what you're thinking, thats about 3 times what we have now. There's more. First, some of the addresses have to point to flash, for system entry points etc. Second, some of the addresses point to stack.

So really, what TI would probably do (if anything) is give you another RAM card, but you could only access one at a time.

The alternative is nasty for TI and developers alike, 24 bit addressing. Granted, this is done on the TI-85/TI-86, but its not fun. So then all our programs would require a port.

See where I'm going? I'd like more RAM, but its more difficult than it seems.

It wouldn't be that hard at all....

LIES!!!! LIIIIIEEES!! ALL COLD-HEARTED LIES! NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SAID IS TRUE!!!! YOUR MOUTH SPEWS VERBAL GARBAGE AT A RATE AS YET UNSEEN TO THE HUMAN RACE! LIIIIIEEEES!!!!

ok, now that that's out of the way (:-p), why do you say it wouldn't be too hard?

I'd just insert the appropriate space in the real RAM, and copy over the program from the extra RAM pages. That would work great in a shell.

*nods*

I had a doggy once... he did funny tricks... and he programmed ASM in his sleep... I miss that doggy...

That would be an interesting dog...

are you high?

...Well... Start working on it...

:-)

um, i thought the 86 used 8-bit adressing. Or was that ram paging? I dunno.

The TI-86 use 16-bit addressing with the RAM broken up into 8 pages of 16K each.

The 86 uses BOTH ram page swapping (Asyncronous something or nother is the proper name) and 24-bit addressing which can access approx 16,777,215 bytes.

The problem with the 24-bit system is that it is VERY slow, while the ram page swapping is very fast.

Of course ram page swapping can only access a small part of memory at a time, which defeats any attempts at large programs (over normal 83+ capacity).

-Rejun2000
I code therefore I am... Superior to you

From my reading of the Assembly Studio 8x 4.0 help file, it was my understanding that the 86 used 16-bit addressing, not 24-bit addressing.

First of all we currently have 32 KB of RAM, not 24. So 65536 bytes is twice what we have now. Aside from the RAM we also have 2 MB (=2048 KB) of Flash ROM. This is nowhere near addressable, so the calc uses a trick called swapping. This is not the place to explain it though. Basically, if the calc can manage 2 MB of ROM, it should be capable of managing 128 KB of RAM, if only the programmers at TI would make write the code.
BTW, the fact that some addresses point to the stack is irrelevant, as the stack is located on a (non-swapable) RAM page.

Sure...But, Are you not forgetting about the 83+ silver?
~It has, from what I understand, everything your looking for.
~On the other hand if your leaning towards an upgarding-like "system" then.........Sure,...why not?!
PS: I am not a Silver user.

YOU IGNORANT PERSON!

Sorry.

Anyway, it DOESN'T have everything we're looking for. All it has is the fastest processor of any of the calcs (15mhz) and 10x the Flash ROM (1.5mb). That is REALLY nice, but not quite all we want - we also want more RAM, of which there is only 24k (accessable for normal use, that is).

what it should be is 1.5 meg flash rom and 240k ram, at minimum. (that ratio of rom to ram is still a little small, but better than 1.5 megs to 24k)

Your right, my mistake - I was thinking of the ROM-MEM.








PS: No hard feelings?

I'm not ignorant, I just try to see every 'probability'.

-Who's 'IGNORANT' now!?!

BUT still, you 'can' put asm prgms in Flash format.!

The SE processor has the fastest clock speed of all the calcs, but it isn't the most powerful. A 12 Mhz 68k (in the 89) can perform more calculations per clock cycle than a 15 Mhz Z80, so it is more powerful. Just like how a 1.5Ghz Athlon XP is faster than a 1.7Ghz Pentium 4 (no, I don't work for AMD, I've benchmarked systems with those processors myself).

:rolleyes:
dont' get all technical - that's what I meant

Correction on my part: I meant upgrading, not upgarding.

Maybe sombody can write an app so that you can save all your games in your Flash ram? That would be nice.

01001001 01100110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01100011 01110100 01110101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100011 01101111 01100100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01000010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01100011 01101111 01100100 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01000001 01110011 01100011 01101001 01101001 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01101110 01101111 00100000 01101100 01101001 01100110 01100101 00101110

Uh...what's this??

What the heck? Why are you posting seemingly random bytes? Is it ASCII text converted to binary format? Is it a monochrome picture? Is it the binary of an exe virus file? Should I shut up now?

Oooh! A puzzle! I love puzzles! Must work on this one now! HaHaHaHa!


Play BASIC, it rules!

Star Fleet 2400
Roller Coaster Rater
World War III

He said "If you actually decoded this Binary code to Ascii you have no life." Which isn't true because I can encode/decode binary/ascii in a few clicks thanks to my nifty translator that I wrote but you've all heard me talk about this back when I posted something in binary on an older news item and started a whole bunch of ppl praising/attacking binary (I was posting with my real name back then). If you want the translator, go to the downloads section of my website. Sign my guestbook too.

Correction: My binary translator is in the visual basic programming section of my site.

I remember something like that ... didn't it say Hello or something like and then asked for the thing that needed to be translated?

My original post was in the Calc vs PDA news article:
<begin old news post>
01000011 01100001 01101100 01100011 01110011 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100010 01110110 01101001 01101111 01110101 01110011 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110011 01110100 00101110 00101110 00101110 00101110 00101110 00100000 00100000 01000011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100001 01101110 01111001 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110010 01100100 01110011 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01100011 01110100 01110101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110101 01101110 01100100 01100101 01110010 01110011 01110100 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01110011 01100001 01111001 01101001 01101110 01100111 00111111
<end old news post>
In ascii, that says "Calcs are obviously the best..... Can any of the other nerds here actually understand what I'm saying?" There were many responses to that, some in binary, most in plain text. It was my most successful post ever, spawning 30 replies. Go to this post's URL for the news article. You'll have to go a couple pages in, it's somewhere near the middle. Yes, I do realize that that was not posted by me(swtaarrs), it was posted by someone named "Brett Simmers," which by some strange twist of fate, happens to be my name! (for those of you who are not the brightest---I was posting under my name back then, not my sn)

Wow, that's an interesting way to make codes!

I mean, that could be used as a secret code by geeks! HAHA!

What do you mean secret? The ASCII code isn't all that secret!
Speaking of codes, I came up with a very interesting idea for encryption. It pretty much involved creating a 7-bit character set (like ASCII but without the extra bit), converting a string to that set, and then writing it to a picture. Since it was 7 bit, you could theoretically get some minor compression if you had enough text. I wrote a program to do it, but I lost when my calc reset before I could back it up. I've lost interest in it since then. But who knows. Maybe I'll regain interest.

Or you could download http://michaelv.org/programs/krolypto/ :)

I'll second that. 256bit RC6 encryption beats the hell out of what you were talking about ;) And being able to totally lock your calc up is pretty nice too.

Probably, but my encryption scheme would have taken a little time to crack due to the fact that the conversion table (the one that converts text into my psuedo-ASCII) can be changed and the fact that it doesn't have to be 7-bit.

Hey, I've been wondering about something like that. My 92+ has more memory, but even archived I can't fit all of he info I want on it at once. Something like a portable memory disk would be great for any calc.


Pay BASIC, it rules!

Star Fleet 2400
Roller Coaster Rater
World War III

I assume you made those games? Never played them.

Star Fleet 2400-In the archives, but final vresion not yet completed.

Roller Coaster Rater-Uploaded thursday, not in archives yet.

World War III-Work in progress.

Forgot to add this: All of them are in the TI-92+ BASIC archive.

I believe there is a way to increase your RAM to 256k, I saw it on a site hosted on calc.org, and I haven't tested it. I believe it was something like ElectronSoft. It sounds insane, but maybe it's worth a try...

The 83+SE has extra RAM, which is used by "virtual calculators" (VCalc, Omnicalc), and Omnicalc's "Restore RAM" functionality. Unfortunately, this area isn't supported by the TI-OS.

This is off the subject of the game but... yea i think that would be useful, u can never have enough memory. I have a TI-83+ SE. It is one of the most useful purchases i have ever made. It has more memory than usual but it still could use some more (just in case). Hopefully there is some kindo of petition...

Hell yea im in!

Sorry, this is a little off-topic, but I wasn't here for a week, so I missed some stuff. According to the last news item, Eric is leaving ticalc.org On the reviewer application stuff, it says you e-mail him the form. If he's gone, then how can someone do that?

Sorry, this is a little off-topic, but I wasn't here for a week, so I missed some stuff. According to the last news item, Eric is leaving ticalc.org On the reviewer application stuff, it says you e-mail him the form. If he's gone, then how can someone do that?

ticalc needs to update there page more often

They'll probably speed up with all of that when the school year comes around... or maybe not, I'm not sure.