Survey posted 2000-03-04 16:50 by Andy.

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To overclock or to leave alone...That is the question. Wheter tis nobler to suffer through terribly slow calculations in the calculater or end it all to risk gaining some speed?

I say Nay, As if some inexpierienced(misspeled(Also misspelled)) newbie gets a ti 92+ then ruins it changing the hardware, and has to buy an 82 because he spent it all on the 92+. They're fast enough, arent they? TI made them that way(not as fast as they could be) for a reason. I cannot fathom why, but if they had wanted to they could already be as fast as they could ever be, but they decided we should build them not as fast. Maybe a risk of fire or something. Maybe they were just being cheep, or didnt know they could make them faster and thats why they didnt. Maybe they said We'll make a deal with energizer to make them go slow so kids have to waste more batteries waiting on 2+2.
Who knowS?

But my point is: If you overclock your calc and break it, youre out a lot of ca$h. And they are fast enough. Sure, you might impress your friends for a while, but it might have unforseen side effects.(Stressing out a piece of hardware or something.) And then tetris will be too hard....Game over in 1.5 seconds after hitting go,etc. But if you want to try it, go ahead. You may have a diffrent opinion and thats ok. But my 89 will not be changed by me. Now:I would overclock on 1 condition:TI did it. They know their calcs best, and hey: They might throw in a warrenty on the new hardware so if it breaks i can send it back.

Thats all for today kiddies.
--R
Ronnie B.

i'd agree... with the fact that your be outa lot of money for the busted Ti...


..but one reason 2 make them faster would be that your could run BASIC progs faster so that they might auctualy run like real games. :P

blah,blah,blaaaaaaaah! you type too much. That article wasted 5 minutes of my valuable time. I could have been doing better things.


69

Anybody know of a good website about overclocking TI-89's?

Try this site:

oops-can't have more then 40 characters in a word or something-try the url-hope it works.

No, I haven't had the time to. If I had the time to I still wouldn't do it. I want to simply challenge myself to program fast games and not cheat my way out by overclocking. And in plus, does overclocking run down the batteries faster and/or cause internal heating or display problems??

From what I've heard, overclocking causes a decrease in battery life. I'm not sure how much of a decrease it is, but it's not something *I* want. My batteries already don't last long enough... ;)

I don't want to offend anyone, but aren't there better things to do besides hanging out at ticalc if you don't have a graphing calculator. I know that some people might be here if they were thinking about buying a calculator. But why sign up for an account?

-Sean

Perhaps the person wants to buy a good graphing calculator, but doesn't know what to get. They might join here as well as some hp site to see what users have to say about their calculators. Even if they've decided TI is the way to go(of course), they still have to decide which model to buy. By reading comments here, they might save $60 because they see that they don't really need a 92+. In the long run, they'll probably be happier knowing they got the right calculator for thier needs.

That's why TICalc should use my "Which is better, 89 or 92+" idea!

I have had trouble opening my HW2 89. Anyone know where I can get a tool to do this?

If your trouble is with taking out the screws then I had the same problem-they have those weird star shaped screws-to get by this I took one of my extremely small screwdrivers and filed it down to make an even more small screwdrive that could fit those things-I don't think I've been any help(oh-well).

!gibberish!

I had to open a calc yesterday because someone spilled juice on it. Those two odd screws i nthe back are called torx screws, and they require a torx screwdriver. Buy the right tools rather than breaking the wrong ones, it's much easier.

The special tools you need are an allen wrench and a screwdriver, at least if your HW2 89 has the same case as my HW1 does, which I'm willing to bet.

Wow, it seems I'm the only one to post here who HAS overclocked a calc. I did it to my 85 three years ago, in order to play Deadalus at a reasonable speed. Unfortunately it also make every OTHER zshell game play at a reasonable speed, and made it impossible to play multiplayer with other calcs. But, on the other hand I did get really good at breakout and ztetris. It KILLS battery life, I had to charge my batteries weekly after I did it, instead of the twice in the year and a half I'd owned it. But, it made people jealous that mine solved equations and graphed faster, so thats all that really matters, no?

One thing that people haven't mentioned is that overclocking is not a permant thing, you can set it up with a switch on the side of you calc to turn overclocking on or off. I've seen someone to it, it isn't hard and it works well.

JEI

I installed a switch to have the option of overclocked/nonoverclocked. It is on the back underneath the battery covering so you cannot normally see it or accidentally change it.

Well, i did overclock my TI92, and my TI85, and both work still fine and a little more than two times faster. I never noticed any crash, error, fire, nuclear explosion etc i could relate to the mod :) (maybe i'm lucky).
Of course, you can always say there's no point in overclocking your calculator since you rarely need to do 10s of additions per second, and it would anyway still be much too slow to do 3D realtime or else. But i did it just because it was fun to see my calc boost just by closing a switch. I made too a mains power supply for my calcs, an extension with I/O ports, analog inputs, stepper motor drivers, etc which are of little use for doing math, but just are fun to use :)
So if you know how to use a soldering iron, do it! You'll be able to show to your friends another useless feature...

The TI calculators are already fast enough, unless you are trying to graph 3D graphs on the TI-89 or 92+ all the time. Other then that, there is really no point in messing with it.

I have heard somewhere, though, that TI actually included a chip to SLOW DOWN the calculators. I also heard that if this chip wasn't there, the calculators would be so fast, it would be unreasonable. I don't know how much of this is true. Has anybody heard anything on this?

Yeah that's about true. By simply changing a simple electronical component your calc will operate at 24MHz, without the traditional overclocking stuff. It's not really overclocking. I'd rather say TI underclocked the calc for you to save battery live. Its design implies that it was designed for 24MHz.

TI Calculators are fast enough?

Obviously, you've never used TI-86 BASIC.

DUH! TI-BASIC sux! But that's not because of the calc, it's because TI-BASIC is a stupid inefficient interpreted HLL. TI-BASIC for the 89/92(+) may have some potential (comparable to Z80 asm), but it just sux for the Z80 calcs. DON'T USE IT, xcept for math.

YA THINK I DON'T <U><B>KNOW</B></U> TI-BASIC SUX?

THE ONLY REASON I USE IT IF FOR MATH AND IT'S STILL TO DAMN SLOW!!!!

Texas Instruments Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code has its advantages. Anyone can learn it, it's easy to learn, and it doens't take too long to learn. Uh, I'm out of ideas...

Oh well, when Super Battle Arena comes out, more than one of you will change your mind.