Wow. You certainly do find a lot of interesting news, and quite quickly.

This is a very interesting development. I'll have to take a look at it.

wow. it looks almost as good as ti-89 graphcs, but smaller...if it is a real screenshot and runs at normal speed like that...

I took a peek at the documentation and it says that a program will run at 10% of a normal program.

Also the interupt it's on goes at 100 hz. So how much work does it do on each tick? I remember Kevin Kofler telling me that the greyscale support in tigcc does not copy the entire screen but works in 1/3 chunks. Does this do something similar?

The interrupt speed can be changed by calling a build-in routine, so you can set it different then 100Hz. A light gray pixel is being showed once in three ticks, and a dark gray pixel is being showed twice out of three ticks. This gives the best quality.

So the routine works basically the same as the ti86 grayscale, but the ti86 has some kind of memory-mapped display, so i had to emulate that using interrupts for the ti83(+). One important difference that this routine has, is that the pixels are drawn 'garbled' in a certain way, so that flickering is minimized. In comparison with the other grayscale programs such as RIGview, this is really much better. On the ti83 the grayscale is almost completely flickerless, but on my 83+ it is perfect (with interrupt frequency of 0 or 2). The quality can change if the batteries are almost completely low, or you have a ti83 with the blue'ish screen, which gives some less quality but still runs fine, even with interrupt frequency 6.

If you have any questions about routines or background information, surf to the maxcoderz board at www.maxcoderz.com, or mail me!

"The demos cast aside any flickers of doubt regarding the viability of grayscale on the 83+; this technology is worth checking out." - any 'flickers' beyond those of doubt?

It looks good. If it works good too, we might implement it in an RPG we are developing. It would have taken a while to finish it, because it has a very large overworld, but with greyscale support it will take even longer. We would have to redesign all tiles aswell...

It looks good - but makes your ASM program run very slowly. Still, it is very good image quality!

Yes, I've tried it and it looks great. But when I run one of those grayscale programs (on Ti-83) it works, but it gives an error when I quit the shell, and resets the calc when I turn it off and back on. I've tried to fix it (there are some small errors in the code, like the location of the interrupt vector table, which is half outside the statvars (saferam2), and the use of ret instead of jp $0038) but I haven't been able to keep it from resetting my calc.

yeah, it is. Just download the grayscale package and load zelda on to your calculator, it runs pretty smooth :)

Wow... you're right. Is this the second one today? That's pretty amazing. :-) Do people mostly e-mail you to inform you of the current news (to MichaelV)?

E-mail is the best way. This news item was the result of an e-mail, TiLP I noticed in the archives, and I found the Advanced Finance app myself.

Cool :) The more news we get, the more visitors we'll attract, I think.

This is amazing, and yet someone has posted a complaint at TINews.net. However, this is the third time in only a few days that I have actually visited this site, betwen December and now, I have only been to TICalc.org about once every couple weeks and only to check for file updates.

Good job in making the site (and comments) worth the time and effor to read.

Now if only the file archiving could be as fast as the news posting. This greyscale package looks good... Think I'll give it a try! BTW, my TiVid compressor is nearly finished, so expect that to appear within a week or so...

I know... the archives NEED updating :) Are they on vacation or something?

Can anyone please tell me how to get the "advanced finance" app. You were discussing about the app when it was released..but I cant find it anywhere..Im wiling to pay for it..but its not at the ti online store..
Is there any other programs for TI-83 plus about finance, i mean, with more options than the "finance"app?

I know this is not the appropriate place to post..sorry..didnt know where to go.

Woohoo! MaxCoderz Rulez!!!!! It's one of the last surviving TI-83/+/SE game site out there!

Wow.

Well, it looks like I'll be visiting ticalc.org more often now, with all these articles coming up.

Also, this looks like a cool program--most of the grayscale I've seen on an 83+ (not much as I don't own one) has been somewhat choppy.

I'd have to agree on that...

me2

Wow. (Thought I'd continue the trend...) But seriously, that screenshot looks incredible. Previously, the best grayscale for 83+ has been RIGview, which is stunning, but doesn't support motion very well. I'm assuming this does... This is the earliest post I've ever made! 3rd! I feel so special...

I'm really getting into Assembly programming now, so this might just be the thing I want for a game.

P.S. - If you guys want a REALLY good memory resetting program go to www.infizz.com/stephen/projects.html#asm

It looks exactly like the real TI-83+ memory resetting process! It even shows the "Mem Cleared" screen, changes the contrast, and shows a blinking cursor.


You can fool your friends, or protect stuff from your teachers

Lol, I'm working on Balrog, with a bunch of different options like that. Looks like we all have the same idea when we learn ASM :) I'm gonna include it in the Ti Toolkit when it gets released :)

Here's a nice exercise for you: try to circumvent TI's new TestGuard app. That should prove to be a bit harder.

Where is it? Is it one of the ones you have to buy?
Oh, you have to be an educator...

The idea is that only educators can get it, and then remotely (using the link cable) reset pupil's calcs. This way, TI attempts to circumvent fake mem clears and the like.
The manuals are available though, so you can make some good guesses about how it probably works. Then it is pretty easy to think up a way to block it.
(This is all speculation, my teachers don't use TestGuard.)

There is only one problem, the teacher punches a password on the teacher calc which appears on the student calc when wiped. This nullify's any chance of faking the calc clear screen.

(I should know, I have a copy)

There are many ways to circumvent the silent link thingy. All you have to do is to have your fake mem-clearing program go to IM 2 without ever going to TI's system routines.

While on IM 2, have your program be able to accept silent link transactions by handling the link in your own program. If you know more about the silent link thing, then you could create one that'll "steal" the FlashAPP by making the calc think that it's reading from the RAM when it's really switched page and reading from FlashROM. I have't thought this one through yet, but I'm in the works of it. I've already tried making some disassembler and having the calc send the information as a very big "FlashAPP" containing text information.

Utilizing the link capability should be easy enough.

RIGView is good, but does flicker quite a bit and the greyscale images come out all streaky... BTW, does drawing lots of horizontal lines make anyone elses TI-83 Plus screen fade? Draw a screen with horizontal lines alternating black/white/black/white etc (spaced a pixel apart). On my calculator I have to turn the contrast to full to see the lines. Why?

You are using heavy duty grade batteries in your calculator. They weren't designed to need so much energy all at once as your calc screen does with RIG View.

Use regular AAA's

So now I know.
Yes, I do buy the cheapy batteries for my calculator (only £1 a packet). How did you find out? Did you have a similar problem?

If you get flickers with RIGVIEW, try resetting the sync. This can be done rom within the viewer using the ( and ) keys, or while converting the picture as a stand-alone program. I find that 92 is the best sync setting.