I say that an emulator could be done on the 68k calcs, but it would be SLOW. I do not remember who said this, but a processor "has to jump through flaming hoops" to act like something it's not. Maybe that extra RAM would benefit, but a 10mhz chip just won't cut it. The SNES system has a chip slower than 4mhz. I have an SNES emulator on a 100mhz machine, and it runs so slow the games are not even playable. I say, if someone has a LOT of time on their hands, go ahead; it would be really nifty, but definitely not useful.

That is true to some extent. The little snes chip was also supported by great graphics chips, which did all the labor on drawing sprites, transparencies, and other tasks. It had thousand of pixels to draw on several layers. Calculators have few chips, and there are very few (comparatively) pixels to draw. But yes, emulation takes a LOT of power.

Just out of curiosity, would this emulator allow a 89 and an 86 to link up? (I don't know anything about programming.:-(

Linking of sorts is possible between different calcs. A program written in assembler on a 92 could talk to a program writtin on an 86, but the two programs need to use the same "language". I believe there is a Tetris game that can do this. Maybe if you ran an 86's OS through the emulator? (that would be weird :-) ) As for exchanging files, I don't know why you would want to do that. Programs on the 89 wont run on the 86, in fact about any file on the 89 can't be used on the 86.

hey guys, when one says emulator, you should think ROM, now the ROM of these calculators are really HUGE! and i guess not even the TI92+ will be able to have enough mem to store the program and the ROM, so just forget this idea, and better work on the CLICK AND CREATE style program, or just a source converter, which would translate TI-8x sources to TI-92... (as i made a fargo -> fargo II source code converter!)

I believe the final opinion on this is static recompilation. Maybe some include files, maybe a true decompiler/recompiler. Whatever it is, it must be on PC.

What about a 89 prog that links to the other calcs and gets the progs and then converts them? Who cares if it's slow?

You would need something that would find the Z80 HEX lines and convert them into 68K HEX lines. Like 011000 would convert into 324FF3

I definitely agree. You have to think now, it would take a lot of effort and hard work to make an emulator. You'd need less than a tenth of that hard work to make a translation utility. If you know the hardware well enough to emulate it, then you know it MORE than well enough to translate it directly. I say stop arguing, and let's try and get to work on something like this.

I agree wholeheartedly. There are a number of reasons that this project only really makes sense on a PC.

1) PCs are easier to program. Which would you rather program in 68k ASM or C/C++/Perl/whatever. There are tools for PCs which help you parse files for code. Rewriting this in ASM would be like reinventing the wheel. There's very little that you should do on a calc that you're only going to do once only.

2) Short of writing communications software to communicate between the calcs, which in and of itself is a large project, you're going to have to send them to a computer anyway and do some type of format conversion. Why not just reassemble then?

3) Speed. Yes I know some of you guys said that you're willing to wait, but don't be silly...this would take a really, really long time on a calc. I probably would even take a good number of seconds on a PC for large programs.

I think what it comes down to is that most of the people posting on this discussion (or most of the ones on TI) really don't have a grasp of what goes into writing programs like these. I'm glad that you're interested, but if you don't understand the problem your suggestions just really sound quite a bit off. Try again after a good computer architecture course.

I think that it should be done mainly on a computer, however, what would happen if someone would make some more libraries for DoorsOS that handle the rom calls instead of converting them on the computer, why not handle them in a library.

it would be a more viable solution just to systematically port every program ever made. you can even port UNIX over before you are successful with a good emulator

it would be a more viable solution just to systematically port every program ever made. you can even port UNIX over before you are successful with a good emulator

There's actually a port of linux for 68k processors without MMUs (68020 and below). It even boots on a palmpilot, but I don't belive its in a useable state yet. Even if it was you would have to recompile everything (I think) to work.

Has anyone thought of an "external" device that could translate the Z80 code to MC68K, and then send it to the calc?

Has the ability to make 512K "external HD"(chips)for TIs been taken into account in the issue of lacking RAM?

What do you mean, hacked the TI-85?

What memory expanders?

You changed the font?

Why have I been left in the dark, someone inform me please.

There is a memory expander for the Ti-89 called moremem and there is a font editor for the 89. I think you should look at some of the things they have for the 89, they're quite impressive.