Survey posted 2004-08-30 21:18 by Jon.

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Or as I keep calling them in typos:

faceplaces

In my opinion, the blue faceplates are sort of ugly, but the others are really ugly...I prefer the original black. Actually, I really don't care that much about the color and would never pay $5-$10 just to change the "look" of my calc...however, seeing that color-changing one on *someone else's* calc would be interesting...

Agghhh!!! I almost typed "faceplaces" too. :-)

You can make one yourself.

Get: silver model paint, acetone, a spare cover (whatever color)

1. Put the model paint on the keys, as well as a line below the screen, and quickly snap (not slide) the cover on and then remove it.
2. Use the acetone to clean off the keys.
3. Drill holes along the pattern on the cover indicated by the paint. Cut (using a small reciprocating saw or Dremel) the top of the cover off.
4. Keep the original as a template in case you ever need to make more and make a new one by tracing the usual pattern.
5. Try snapping the cover on. If some buttons are obscured, refine your process until you get the desired result.

This won't be an actual faceplate because the buttons will be recessed. However, it is an approximation. :)

COOL!!! But still why did you think of this and explained in great detail how to make your own faceplate

If it was in great detail I'd tell him part numbers and what size bit to use.

If you do that, then you can no longer fit a cover onto your calculator...I'm assuming you're talking about the protective sliding cover with "Texas Instruments" on it, and not a faceplate...personally, I;d rather have a cover.

But I do have to admit, that's a cool idea :-).

Haha, orange sucks.

and what would look better pink.

JKJK lol.

Yeah, I can't see orange fitting in with the colors of the calculator, but maybe that's just me.

It's not just you. I can't really see *any* of them, except maybe blue, fitting in. :-D

Take that back! :)

It would be interesting to have a picture of a fractal on the faceplate, as a background for the front plate. A very faint hope, but maybe. :-)

Paint it black ©

Nice poll, of course, faceplates suck. My transluscent red/blue/grey/yellow/green (NOT PURPLE) slide case rules all.

Faceplates are cool, I guess, but be careful not to go overboard. They're calculators, not cell phones.

On an off-topic side note, it appears we have another auto-downloaded BASIC game: "Spaced Invaders!!"

Now that I look at the full list, perhaps "Joe 1" and "House Adventure" are also auto-d/l'ed...

Also, who's to say that it was "auto-downloaded" and not "manually-downloaded by-some-loser-BASIC-programmer who-has-no-life and finds-more-pride-in his-statistics-than-in his-programs-and-will-do anything-including-cheat-to raise-the-statistics"...That's another possibility...

Oh yeah...that too...

But 3500?? If he managed 1 download every 10 seconds, it would take over 9 1/2 hours! Hey, maybe he does have no life...

I like the blue and orange color but i will wait for the next generation of calculators that i hope is going to use the eZ80 micro-processor with its good performance.

eZ80190 (eZ80 family)

"The eZ80® executes Z80 code four times faster than traditional Z80 MPUs at the same clock speed, and can operate at speeds up to 50 MHz. Unlike most 8-bit microprocessors, which can only address 64 KB, the eZ80® can address 16 MB without a Memory Management Unit. The eZ80190 MPU features the ZiLOG TCP/IP Software Suite (ZTP), which enables the transmission and reception of HTML form data and the dynamic generation of web pages."

//Information from Zilogs own homepage www.zilog.com

50 MHz processor
Multiply and Accumulate engine
16 MB linear addressing
3.3V operation
2 DMA channels
Universal ZiLOG Interface (selectable UART, IIC, SPI)
6 PRTs with prescalers
8 KB SRAM
32-bit GPIO with interrupt support
On-chip oscillator
Optimized pipeline architecture
ZiLOG Debug Interface (ZDI)

Software Features:
TCP/IP Stack - Full protocol support:IPv4, TCP, UDP, ARP, RARP, ICMP, PPP, HTTP 1.1, DHCP/BOOTP, IGMP, SMTP, SNMP, Telnet, FTP, TFTP, DNS, TIMEP
Configurable utility
Webfiles to C conversion utility
32-bit GPIO with interrupt support
Ethernet drivers
C-Compiler

The networking features wouldn't be much use on a calc (well, they would to us nerds who modify our calcs, but not to TI)...maybe the Z380 instead?

Lewk like.