Survey posted 1999-12-01 05:04 by Andy.

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ticalc should add a page with a list reliable places to buy calculators. I'm personnally looking for a TI-89 in Canada... with no luck.

Kaven

Why don't you just order one on the Internet?

Yeah.. but, where ?? I heard a lot of horror stories about Dim-TI. I don't know any other places with low prices.

Kaven

ACZ still sells calcs right? Their prices are pretty low. Try http://www.acz.org.

We're working on getting a new distributor and a merchant account (something like that), so you can't order one right now (sorry). But Calculators, Inc. (www.calculatorsinc.com) is a good place to buy them. I got my TI-89 from them the week after it came out for $133 + $5 s/h (US Dollars).

Options:
1. Hit the "Services" link on the toolbar at the top of the screen. There is a service for buying or selling calculators.

2. Go to the source. Texas Instruments must sell them off their site (I don't know, I'm too lazy to look).

3. Try an online shopping service off of for instance Yahoo or CNET.

4. Buy one in an auction at places like eBay.

I think that ticalc.org needs to provide a better way to search and browse through calculator programs. There are so many that it isn't practical to try them all. The reviews do help, but I think they should be incorporated into the archives. That way you could see all the programs (not just the reviewed ones), the descriptions, the ratings (all aspects would be better), and maybe also the programs' homepages.

I think that it would be good if users could post individual feedback to a program on the description page. It amazes me that programs can get posted and have bad coding in them. Why would you release a buggy program or one that fails to operate, period? That puzzles me.

So, aside from reviews, which are helpful too, I'd like a user feedback area to give others a hint, ahead of time, about the quality of the program.

Having comments on every program would take up a huge amount of space, at least if they were like these newsboards. Also, if a buggy program is updated and fixed, it would still have the bad feedback.

Having the reviews displayed in the actual archives with the non-reviewed programs would be a huge help to people searching for a good program. It would also help us reviewers know what programs have yet to be reviewed.

Exactly. Why not put the reviews with the other info like screenshots? You can't always tell the quality of the game by the screenshots, the reviews are really helpfull.

-Dot

Have to wait and see if any of these ideas get used. From what I understand, chris really doesn't care what you have to say, unless you send it to him (or his site) in an email. (and that doesn't always work)

...be odd if any of these ideas get used... my impression about this site just -might- improve.

Could ticalc.org consider haing a text-only mirror? I love the new look, I think it's one of the slickest websites around, but I don't enjoy the long delays while my user-agent renders the pages. The search results of links to other websites are painfully slow to render. Keep up the good work!

Vasantha aka _merlin

Use Lynx to browse the site :)

There should be a one click access to the desire calculator file section. Since there is this feature called "Your Account" on this site, there should be a custom linked list.

We have specified the type of calculator (TI-83, TI-86, etc) we are using, so there should be a link on the page which allow use to access the archive section for the calculator in click.

There is the new files which help he occasionally, but some time they don't have new files from that calculator/language which forces me to click a few link.

Note, I don't use bookmark/favorites cause I am too lazy.

I chose other because i feel that ticalc.org tries to do too much. There is no need for alot of the sections on this webpage, and it clutters up the navigation. For instance Programming Ideas and Upcoming Programs can be ditched.

Other than that... I would really like to see a reorganization of the Programming Tutorials, and I would be willing to help make a few to help people out.

Some ideas for the new tutorials (and reorganizing old ones):

-rate each tutorial beginner, intermediate, advanced.
ex. beginner would be a tutorial on say Compiling a file with DevPac83 for SOS; intermediate would be a tutorial on how to use a Sprite Routine; and Advanced could be a tutorial on Grayscale via Interrupts.

-make the tutorials more uniform, and not calculator/shell dependant.

-as was said earlier have tutorials on porting games

-show how the code is used in a real game. Like why we would want a masked sprite routine in legend of zelda. I think its best to learn by trial and error in a real game.

-have only ONE tutorial to show you how to compile for each Calculator and/or Shell. This would ensure programming standards and not confuse beginners.

Hmm...I agree with the part about programming. Right now, programming tutorials are scattered at different websites, and the only way to discover them is by searching. Someone should make a page with links to ALL TI-BASIC tutorials, and programming sections, that are good, and available. Some places with good programming tutorials are www.ticalc.org, www.calc.org, www.ti-files.org, spleenworks.web.com, blankware.freeservers.com AND PLEASE click reply if you know of more web pages that have BASIC tutorials.

The best BASIC tutorial I've found is the one included in the manual. I'm not sure what the other manuals look like, but the TI-89's programming appendix is VERY GOOD. I believe the manuals are available for download at www.ti.com.

~ferich

Yeah, you really shouldn't need anything more than the manual for BASIC. ASM, on the other hand, is scarcely mentioned in my TI-86 manual, and most of the tutorials I've found only have the *very* introductory part finished.

I would like to see:<p>-More screen shots. Dammit, I want to see what the GD program looks like before I download it and lock my calc.<p>
-People put more information into their program's accompanying files. Double dammit, this is another thing wrong with people. Nobody tells you what the hell it's supposed to do and/or how you use it!<p><p>
Okay, that's enough for now. Tune in next month when I get the aboslute first quote in on the survey...

One thing that I think many people would like to see is a specific tutorial on programming the TI-83plus. Right now, you have to look and programming the 83 and modify 70% of it at least. This isn't at all helpful to programmers like me who are trying to learn assembly language for the first time.

Ahmed El-Helw told me that he is going to write a ti-83+ asm tutorial.

~Jonathan Taylor