There is a big problem here that is being overlooked. In the past, TI calculators were made with true ROM... read-only. They were confident that when the technology became outdated, consumers would buy more calcs. However, the new "flash rom" gives the possibility for an almost infinately upgradable calc. This would never be good for business, so TI added a little "feature" to the new flash calcs... a limited number of upgrades. Theoretically, at some point in the distant future the calc will completely shut down and refuse to work (at least this is how I understand it). Consumers are then forced to buy more calcs. Perfect... almost. While this may be fine for normal users, in my opinion TI has totally neglected all the programmers and developers that drive the popularity of their products. How many programmers out there want to write, flash, crash, restore, modify, flash, crash restore, and everything else necessary to write quality software if they knew that each calc crash was "eating up" a little bit of their calc's limited life? I'm wary.

What I keep hearing(at least from the mailing lists, I haven't heard directly from TI) is that the ROM can be flashed about 10,000 times before it goes bad. For me, this should outlive the restof the calc. Someone please verify my numbers.

I thought TI would get money by charging for the new ROMs. They can't only let you flash a few times b/c AFAIK they will be releasing new versions of the same calc (like there are different versions of the others) so you can update it to fix a bug in the OS.

Hehehe - you're misunderstanding a fundamental property of flash rom. Flash rom can be read from an infinite number of times without the data deteriorating. But it can only be written to a finite number of times before it becomes unreliable. This is not some "trick" TI created to make you buy another calculator. This is just how flash rom works. The number is quite high tho - 10,000 or even more. I don't think that you'll run out of writes before you tire of your calc. There's no conspiracy here - just good old chaos theory ;)

Well, if you really are going to flash that thing 10,000 times, you might as well get an emulator... Except VTI doesn't seem to restore states quite well, says something about not recognising the sate I just saved...

Well, I have a lot to say but i am going to make it short cause i have to try to get to sleep. All of us here are talking about making an os and how cool it would be, nnow, not to imply that i know anything about 68k asm, but i am will to start a group to begin searching for ways to do this os project, I do have a few ideas on how to approach this project. my e-mail is: ajp259@hotmail.com
Somethign that i think that we NEED to talk about it how in the last post the guy said that there is a limmited number of upgrades, this needs to be investigated this is huge, i really need to know wwhat is up with this. I will nwo say anymore about how serious a limit on upgrades would be if there is infact a limit untill i find out in wroiting where that is from ti, and what the actuall number is, okay, I am sorry for all ther mispellings there must be in this thing, i was typing very fast cause i really do have to get to sleep,
later
-Aj

10000 Times

Okay, I have a thought about emulating a Mac on a TI-89 as a second OS:

The orriginal Mac was less powerful than the TI-89, at least memory and speed wise. For those of you not familiar with it, it used a 8MHz 68000 with 64k ROM and 128k RAM. With the memory available in the Ti-89, I believe it would be entirely possible to emulate one of these orriginal Macs, even though it would be rather pointless. (The only programs I have that can run on one are System 1.1n and a database program)

Don't forget that it had a drive to store things on... unlike what we're using :-)

Also... MacOS is the antithesis of what the typically tech-nerd filled world of TI-xx programmers. It shields the user from the system, and we want closer access. It's like wearing a blindfold instead of glasses.

Personally, I like all of the suggestions of UNIX-like and DOS-like (or CPM/80-like for that matter) OSes for TI calcs...

The original MacOs ran on a machine with a 400k floppy drive and 128k of ram. Since 22272 bytes were used for the screen, the os must be pretty small. This OS could be made even smaller by removing much of the extra code not used on the calc.

The MacOs does not shield the user from the system anymore than the TI-OS does. TI said that you couldnt use ASM on a 92... Fargo beat that. The same is true of the mac os. If you have a minimal knowledge of how the system works, you begin to see its potential.

Since the old versions of the MacOs are free, and there are plenty of 128k Macs that can be used for testing, the MacOs seems to be the way to go.

I think you got your numbers mixed up the ti-89 has a 10 mhz processor (the same as the ti-92)
see http://www.ti.com/calc/docs/faq/83faq067.htm
As far as the size of the ROM you are way off the ti-89 has have about the same size rom as the ti-92 ( a little smaller because the geometry application is not in th 89's rom), and the ti-92's ROM's size I think is about 1 meg or more i am not positive but it is defintaly more then 64k. This is the reaason a GUI OS may be reasonable if you could put it on the ROM memory instead of the RAM.

Let me clarify: The specs I gave were for the orriginal Mac. What I'm saying is, the TI-89, with over 1/2 MB RAM and a 20% faster processor should be able to emulate a Mac. Why bother? Well, why do people climb Mt. Everest? Because it's there. Why emulate a Mac on a calculator? Because you can. :-)

My bad I thought you were talking about the ti-89
Even though I am not an avid mac user I think making a mac os for the ti-92 would be pretty cool. I hope someone goes ahead with this project or something simular.

First of all: MacOs on a TI? What's the point?
Without a mouse and with such a small screen it
would be pointless. What we need is a unix-like
OS, and that shouldn't be impossible. Also, a
few 68000-based OS:es was mentioned, but not
the (IMO) most interesting; Amiga OS.
There's a lot to learn from this OS that was
(still IMO) superior to all other OS:es in the
late 80s and early 90s - mainly because of the
fast multitasking and the fact that the entire
OS was composed out a few, well-documented "libraries" (known as DLL:s in the windows world).

I have been thinking about how to make a good OS
for the TI92 for some time... If I ever get
around to it, it will be unix-like with a micro-
kernel (something along the lines of QNX perhaps)
with very simple functionality (priorityless,
round-robin preemptive multitasking) but with
the ability to override and extend everything
with new, more advanced funtionality. This would
allow for a very small OS if all you want is the
ability to run some games (say a kernel around
1-2k) but with the ability for a full-fledged
unix.

I also think that anyone considering developing
an OS should think twice about it; it is not
a very good "first" project. I have been
programming for many years, most of the time in
68000-assembler - and I've a good deal of
experience with unix-like OS:es and how they're
built but I still feel it's a very tough
project, especially if you want to get it "right"
and not make all mistakes again (even with lots
of money, time and experience this may happen,
just look at windows ;).

About the flash-limit; If I start this project I
will of course use my emulator as much as
possible :)

//Jonas Minnberg (Sasq)

I totally agree with the Amiga OS idea. I have a Amiga 500 with the old Workbench and OS. I think that was Excellent for an 80's computer(still have it too) and seeing it on my new '89 would be kinda cool. The Amiga OS was IMHO the best GUI in the 80's because it truly was the predassor of the GUI made by microsoft(eg. Win95). It would be cool to see some of the old amiga games(rick dangerous baby!) on the calc.
Anybody making one Amiga OS tell me!

Forgive my ignorance, but when you say 'emulator' do you mean a version of the calc on your pc? if so, where can i get a hold of one of those things?

Or am i just totally misunderstanding?

Yes. A TI Emulator is a program that mimics a specific TI calc on your computer by using the ROM. You can get a hold of one by going to the reviews section, then to Windows. Read the reviews before download though!

Also, for my own help, I've been trying to dump a ROM from a TI-82, for my own reasons using Gluvna's ROM Dumper software and when I press enter to transmit the ROM my Grahplink software gives me a transmission error. It's not my Graphlink cord or port number because I can transfer program both two and from my computer. Also, if anyone could kindly tell me where I can obtain a TI-89 ROM so that I can program for the calc without having to own it, I would be greatful.

You can get a TI-89-ROM legally at http://www.ti.com/calc/flash/89.htm (but it's use is ILLEGAL (!!!) if you don't own a TI-89!!! (It's against the license agreement!)).

However, here are the instructions: download ti89base.exe and unzip it to extract ti89base.tib. Copy this to the VTI directory (you need VTI 2.0 or higher or the outdated VTI68k) and you can use it.

The same is valid for TI-92+ ROMs.

How do I send programs from VTI to my calc? I made a bunch of programs, and I can't use them! :(

Good to see someone who actually knows something about OS's posting on this topic.. :)
Yes I whole hartedly agree.. an amiga OS port would be the best option.. it' was susch a well designed operating system (and close to my heart - it was written mostly here at Cambridge :)
the Amiga had a lot mroe powere than amiga os acually needed, you know so it should be pretty easy to port it well. The only problem is really filesystems.. has anyone actually ogt an amiga who fancys whackingh the rom and workbench atartup disk onto file so people can start hacking around with it???

Rob

First off I do think new rom's are very possible. I person dumped their 89 rom mistakenly and it still booted, but with no extra algebra and calculus stuff. There is a TI OS ROM (size=?), then added software ( 250K-500K ), user archiving ram ( 384K ) and system ram ( 250K, 180K of that available to the user ). That's almost a meg of ram ( the Palm Pilot has 2 megs ). You would have to boot to the TI OS then exec a boot loader from there. Here is my proposal for a new TI-89 OS, I wanted to voice my opinion on what the OS would be like. The entire idea and purpose of an OS would be to make the TI-89 as open and as accessible as possible. The current OS, that TI provides doesn't give us the power we desire out of our calcs. We need more. We need to push our TI's to the max! Here we go.

TI-89 GNU OPEN TI OS

Proposal

PC to TI connectivity station
External GNU C/C++/ASM Compilers ( why aren't we using these with good libraries? )

Stable System Kernel ( does the system chores, interupts, blah, blah )
A standard programming library
File System (with compression options)
GUI and text Shell interfaces
Multi-tasking
Networking Protocal
Standard system DLL's program interfaces
Security System
Scripting language (similar to TI-BASIC but more power and robust, like
Java Script)
Word Processing and other associated applications ( extras )