[TI-H] Re: Which calc should i buy???
[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
[TI-H] Re: Which calc should i buy???
first I thank you for a motivation that makes sense :)
At 21:21 2001-11-14, you wrote:
>The 89 isn't a bad little machine. It's got a pretty decent cpu (for a
>calc) and a
>fair amount of ram. I never did much programming with it. I bought it
>specifically for programming. I got it within a month of it coming out.
Heh, got it for the same reason at the approx. same time :)
>didn't get into it right away, and never did anything with it later. The
>whole kernel versus nostub thing is really annoying, and TI's support sucks.
>If those doors guys hadn't ruined everything, it probably would have been
>much better. Rusty never liked the idea of a kernel, and plusshell
>originally didn't have one.
no, but it had a big loader in the beginning of each program. Not very good
either.
Except in the case below where the executable is also compressed.
> He mentioned that he wished he hadn't given in
>to them, and maybe none of this mess would have occurred. It's a much
>harder calc to program for, given it's complexity and the whole kernel mess.
for the programmer, he can just ignore kernels completly if he want. There
is no need for kernels on the ti89. But yes, the fact that some programs
(less and less nowadays since TIGCC thankfully) require one is a hassle for
the user.
But that doesn't matter at all for the programmer.
Just ignore shells and use the built in asm support.
>The 89 can be very useful, if you need symbolic manipulation. However, it's
>too easy to use it as a crutch and not learn your algebra. It doesn't
>nearly do everything, so if you don't learn algebra, calculus will be quite
>tough.
Nothing to add here.
>It's very clear that the OS was designed for the 92. The homescreen
>history thing is nice, but everything else sucks. The menus are very slow,
>and annoying.
This I don't recoginze at all. My menus are certainly not slow. Hm. Do you
still use AMS 1.00 or 1.05?
In that case, upgrade to 2.x, it has a lot of improvements, among other
things in menus. (you could for example not push up at the top of the menus
in 1.x and get to the bottom of the menu. You can in 2.x)
How being designed for the 92 has anything to do with this I don't
understand either.
There is virtually no differnce at all between a 92+ and an 89 hardwarewise.
>The 86, on the other hand, is great in every way. The only thing I dislike
>is that TI decided to end that line of calcs, and never produced a version
>that had flash. I'd love to be able to reprogram the OS and have more
>memory. But overall it's fine the way it is.
ok.
>Shells are optional.
Is on 89 too, at least for the programmer.
I recommend everyone to ignore shells.
>Every
>program can be run from the homescreen. You don't have to worry about
>things not working with each other, what shell you have, getting a bunch of
>libs, etc. It just works.
The shell bit has improved a bit today, 90% of the programs needing shells
are at least compatible with eachother.
More and more is ignoring shells, wich I think is good.
The new format with compressed executables are also very nifty imo.
> It's very easy to program for. The display is
>memory mapped, and doesn't completely suck like on the 82 line. You can do
>nice looking, flicker free grayscale very easily. The system design is easy
>to learn. Programs are relocated before running, so you just write code,
>and know exactly where it will be.
This is all the same for the 89. One thing I don't like about the 86 screen
is that it doesn't have square pixels.
Specially easy to program for if you use TIGCC :)
> There is a huge number of system calls
>that are well documented, and you just call them, no hassle.
The system calls on the 89 is also very well documented. Big thanks to
Zeljko Juric with tigcclib.
There is also documentation from TI in the SDK
> Programs are
>copied before being run into an 8k area.
Same but up to a 24K area instead. (a note though, that 68k instructions
are about twice as big as z80, since the 68k is a 16/32 bit processor while
the z80 is an 8 bit)
> You also have 16k of completely
>free, scratch memory for things like tables, buffers, levels, etc. This is
>more ram than the 82 series has altogether.
On the ti89, you can store a bunch of data on the stack, I don't remember
exactly how much. The stack is 16K but you probably want to leave some for
pushes and pops.
If this isn't enough, you can call system calls, and allocate up to how
much memory you currently have free.
If your program is alone, it could be up to and above 100K, a limit on the
amount you can allocate each call though, I think it is 64K
>If you want an example of a nice looking game for the 86, check out Zelda
>86. I didn't do the graphics or the maps, so I can say that it looks good.
>Let me see you do something like this on an 82 series calc. Yeah, right:
I don't like 82/83 either :)
///Olle
Follow-Ups:
References: