Survey posted 2005-04-19 18:01 by Jon.

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Survey idea by me.

I wonder what processor ti would use if it wasn't z80 or 68k

Hmm... Apple G5!

Too hot (unless you want to have to use heavy-duty fiberglass oven mitts to hadle your calc).

G3 (or older PPC) would be better. Apple's already written a very nice 68k > PPC emulator, and they aren't too hot. Also, they come in speeds up to 700 MHz (G3).

Or maybe use Motorola's 88000 architecture.

Or go the way of HP and grab an ARM.

There is no way that a full desktop cpu can be used in a calculator like a G3. It would drain your puny 4 AAA batteries in like 10 seconds plus hundreds of other reasons that I'm not going bother to think up right.

Hence my suggestions of viable alternatives.

Anf the first calculators had battery lives of six hours. We are, in effect, spoiled by our months.

heck, we might be able to get years if we used LI-ion :)

BTW, check the link and tell me if it works :)

crud, it doesn't work. Oh well...

For newbies, type the following into your address bar:
about:mozilla

If it doesn't work, then you have a mac :)

about:mozilla works perfectly in Firefox and Camino on my Mac. It doesn't work on IE on the school's computers (no surprise, there).

Come on? How many (normal) Mac-heads do you know that have anything besides safari? Although normal mac-user is an oxymoron...

maybe there is a reason that a a mozilla command 'About:mozilla' wont work in ie. :whistles to self: thats like saying ur cd wont work in your tape player...

Or get a 64-bit AMD Athlon!

that would be awesome...except they'd have to use LiIon batts, and add a port for an AC adapter, which they should do anyway. hey, you never know--XBox next's going to use a tri-G5 processor. Macs only use a dual-G5. Mac 4evr

Non-windows PCs forever!

didn't we do this last time 2? Unix OSs 4evr

Uh, "Non-windows PCs" and "Unix OSs" don't necessarily contradict each other...

LOL, three G5s?
A) That's unneccesary
B) The current Celeron processor in XBOXs seems to work fine
C) Since Microsoft makes XBOXs, the tri-G5s are probably gonna be as fast as a z80 ;)

My calc is running 3 z80's, and could beat an xbox any day!

how'd you do that?

he is just bs'n you, there is no way to interface 3 z80's, im sure the z80 dosent even have the ability to dual proccess anyway

Of course there are ways to interface 3 Z80s and make them work together, with the right software! The reason it hasn't been done is because it's not worth it - it's 10x as easy just to replace it with a Z380, or overclock it, or something like that. :-p

Three G5's????
Even Apple is moving away from PowerPC chips because IBM and Motorola can't manufacture them fast enough!

uhh... Microsoft doesn't use the PowerPC processors; they write for x86 (for games anyway... there is vpc and office for mac)

they are for XBox next

thats stupid, ms has only ever written software for x86, thats like expecting mac to start releasing mac os for x86, i dont think the xbox will actually use a g5 proccessor, show me some proof, otherwise its just spectulation

What's more likely is that MS will use IBM's 970 core in the XBoxes, not the G5 proper.

Possibly an ARM or one of those other non-standard ones made by Hitachi, Atmel, ST, etc.

Actually, the 68k chips are manufactured by Hitachi, not Motorola.

Do you mean all 68Ks (as in Motorola sold the processor line to Hitachi) or 68K equivalents used in the 89/92/v200?

all 68ks (yes, they sold the line) and the 68ks used in TI calcs are real 68k processors, not equivalents

Motorola has sold off virtually all of its semiconductor business. Freescale Semi owns the intelectual property on all of Motorola's microprocessors and DSPs now. Including the 68k line. Perhaps Hitachi is a licensed 3rd-party manufacturer of 68k CPUs. I don't really know.

But this is hardly anything new. The PPC core (from which the G3, G4, G5 are derivatives) was a co-production of IBM and Motorola. (btw: Apple has never designed its own CPUs.)

Calling ARM CPUs 'nonstandard' is anything but accurate. It is the de facto standard for Palm and PocketPC PDAs. And, several companies produce their own flavours of ARM CPUs. (Including: Samsung, Intel, Atmel, and... wait for it... Texas Instruments!)

I say TI should start making new caluclators using their own in-house ARM CPUs. TI already has the best OS and CAS of any graphing calculator out there. It's about time they got their act together, and produced something whose hardware can compete with HP again.

Actually, Apple, Motorola, and IBM got together to design the PPC processor, so, technically, Apple has designed a processor.

Perhaps use an Intel XScale (i.e. PXA255) processor with a lithium ion battery and a Linux-based OS. Almost like a PDA :).

Agghhh...when are people going to stop suggesting powerful processors that eat up batteries??? (I know the XScale line is used in PDAs, but it still uses a lot more power than the Z80 or 68Ks in calcs). Just buy a PDA. ;-)

yea, even the old velo's which couldnt proccess their way outa a wet binary paper bag, they still could go through a set of batteries in a matter of days's, a day even if u use the backlight alot..., lets just go w/ the z80 or 68k, they work, tons of software etc...

A Pentium D 3.00 GHz!

Let's use Relais Logic!!! It isn't just slow, power consuming and huge, it also clicks!!!

I think they might use a 60Hz PowerPC processor, and they might make the calculator in color. I would like to see an increase in memory as well, too. I like memory.

Uh...did you really mean "60 Hz"?

Well, the HP49g+ calculator has a 75Mhz ARM processor. However, an ARM processor has a reduced instruction set, and the TI-89's 68k processor is very much a complex instruction set, thus making the 10MHz number a bit more and the 75Mhz number a bit less. It's a significant boost, but not a 7.5x boost. Oh, and by the way, PowerPC is also a reduced instruction set processor quite similar to ARM, but with fewer registers among other things (I'm not sure on this; correct me if I'm wrong).