Re: Release of Fargo
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> are the not some one hwo live near David E.
> Hwo could wake him up ?
> DAVID IF U ARE READING THIS PLEASE FINISH FARGO THERE ARE A LOT
> OF HPs OUT THERE!!
Amidst all the whining about Fargo, a post like this comes along
which has to make you shake your head.
Is this why everyone is so impatient for the release of Fargo -
so that their TI92's can somehow be magically transformed into
"HP-killers"? What exactly is Fargo going to do which will make
the TI92 superior to "all those HP's out there"?
>From the description of Fargo which I've read at ticalc.org,
there is absolutely nothing that Fargo can do for the TI92
which will give it any advantage at all over the HP48. Maybe
it's all the great extras which will be released with Fargo,
like (from ticalc.org):
> 1) An MS-DOS program to support both the parallel and serial
> homemade link cables.
So? Both the TI92 and the HP48 can do this out-of-the-box.
> 2) A group of text files categorizing (virtually) everything
> we've found out about the internals of the TI-92...
OK, this may make for interesting reading, but what new
functionality does it add?
> 3) FTris, a Fargo game based on GameBoy Tetris. The speed,
> scoring, and game play are equivalent to GameBoy version.
Wow, a game. (The HP48 has one built into ROM, by the way).
Just as ZShell is to the TI85, I suspect that Fargo's real
attraction is the whole slew of useless calculator games which
will become possible following its release.
> 4) FTerm, a communications program for the TI-92. FTerm can be
> used to dial BBSes if you can figure out how
> to connect your TI-92 to an external modem.
If you can figure out how to connect your TI-92 to an external
modem? Pretty big if, since the TI92 has no standard RS-232
serial port. The HP48, on the other hand, does, and people have
sucessfully connected their HP's to external modems. The
only problem is that things are so slow as to be unuseable.
Though the TI92's processor is faster than the HP48's for doing
certain tasks, the situation would be no different for a
"connected" TI92. Let's face it - this has value as a novelty
only. What useful purpose would a slow, RAM-limited device like
a calculator (any calculator) have once connected to a real
computer?
> 5) Some compilable sample source code to show how Fargo
> programs are written.
Regarding the HP48, this info has been available from HP for
years. Unlike TI, HP has done a good job of making available
the information and the tools to write assembly language
programs for its HP48 series.
> 6) Everything you need to compile your own Fargo programs
> on a PC.
Available via ftp for the HP48, or included with any number of
"how-to" manuals written by some of the same people who
developed the HP48.
So, once again I have to ask what is Fargo going to do for
the TI92 which will propel it head and shoulders above "all
those HP's out there"? Seems to me that, with the exception
of its excellent symbolic calculus routines, a "Fargo-ed"
TI92 will only be playing catch up to the HP48. Can anybody
help me out here and post what kinds of things they're planning
to do with their TI92 once Fargo is released?
Like:
Expand the calculator's RAM to 1.256Mb? Add a clock, alarms,
and date arithmetic? Add a speaker? Add infrared file transfer
capability? Add an equation library? Add card slots? Drop
the QWERTY keyboard so that it can be used on college entrance
exams?
No, I didn't think so...
If Fargo's purpose in life is to slay the HP, it had better
find a more capable machine with which to do it.
<pre>
--
Karl E. Yeanoplos
Denver, CO
kyeanopl@ast.lmco.com
</pre>
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