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Sonic MisAdventures

I don't have the patience to try and find a USB->serial adapter to use my ancient GraphLink, otherwise I'd load it on my 89 and see how true-to-life it is.

The REAL challenge would be to make a passable port of Sonic The Hedgehog to the Z80. Sega did this both as a last hurrah for the Sega Master System, and a port to promote the Game Gear.

There is an open-source driver you can run as an application to use a PS/2 keyboard rewired to a graphlink connector... unfortunately I can't find the link. But I built an adapter a few years ago for my TI-83, basically you run the TX and RX lines through. Not sure if this is a viable option but I found a link to a pre-built device: http://www.calc.org/webstore/ You might want to try modding one of those fold-up Palm keyboards, it'd be an interesting hack and still portable enough to use. I used to take notes on my TI-83.

On the other hand, it may even be more sad that they still sit so close to human touch, considering that no one has gotten any use out of them since my freshman year in college, some three years ago.

That TI-82 was good to me. It saw my first programming efforts come to fruition: from simple BASIC math applications (for which I became a seemingly proficient developer) to minor assembly applications (which I never got deeply into). Since getting my TI-83 in high school I haven't used the TI-83, and since getting the TI-89 my senior year I haven't used any of the others (except occasionally the TI-83 for its financial calculating prowess!)...

Oh the history of calculators. I still remember the days when I worked on the web site Calc.org, which was then called Dimension-TI (heh), and later the TI-Files... and of course we all can remember submitting to and downloading from ticalc.org, the only of all the TI calculator web sites with just the right look and feel to endure the many years of evolving technology and still remain on top.

Sorry for this post. I think I was reminiscing. Hmm...

I made a few games for my TI-82 in high school. Nothing too complex: Pole Position and a side-scroller spaceship-shooting-the-other-spaceships kind of game. But Pole Position got harder as you advanced (the road got narrower) and I made the display pretty smooth (~4 fps)with just a short delay while it built the course in an array. It also kept score, until you reset the variable that it used.

I'd post the games online, but the floppy disk I copied the games to turned out top be corrupted. NEVER clear out the memory until you've tested the backups.

There was a very popular game for the 85's called "Boink" at my school, it was a whack-a-mole type game. A new version for the 83 is available at calc.org. In fact, the site appears to have a lot of games including a doom-like game for the Ti-92.

I made a few games for my TI-82 in high school. Nothing too complex: Pole Position and a side-scroller spaceship-shooting-the-other-spaceships kind of game. But Pole Position got harder as you advanced (the road got narrower) and I made the display pretty smooth (~4 fps)with just a short delay while it built the course in an array. It also kept score, until you reset the variable that it used.

I'd post the games online, but the floppy disk I copied the games to turned out top be corrupted. NEVER clear out the memory until you've tested the backups.

There was a very popular game for the 85's called "Boink" at my school, it was a whack-a-mole type game. A new version for the 83 is available at calc.org. In fact, the site appears to have a lot of games including a doom-like game for the Ti-92.

Slashback with more on cheap satellites, the relative speeds
of threads under Linux and two strains of Windows, a skeptical response to the
idea that crowds of people are retreating to dial-up access, and some
tantalizing hints at products killed along with the HP calculator division.

Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, Benchmarks, Etc. Writing with a
followup to the Slashdot post titled, "Who
Has Faster Pipes? Linux, Win2000, WinXP Compared" Splinton had this to say: "In this
article, Ed
Bradford compares semaphores, mutexes and window's critical sections.
Pthreads look good, but Win2Ks critical sections are twice as fast again!"

The computing equivalent of Area 51? A short while back HP
closed its calculator division. Many have thought HP's calculator department was
unprofitable. This was not the case. Many have thought they had no innovation.
This was not the case. Turns out that management had 4% workforce to kill and
they were part of the cut.

This article
explains more. It turns out they had designed several Linux based PDA's ready
to produce that were killed by management. Sounds interesting? Go check it
out.

The real trick to keeping costs down is to do the job with as small a team as
possible in the minimum time possible. Rather than employing a large team of
specialists, HETE's scientific investigators did much of the engineering and
technical work. A small, carefully selected engineering team filled in the
knowledge gaps."

Quitting isn't easy, and why bother

Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, Benchmarks, Etc.
Writing with a followup to the Slashdot post titled,

"Who Has Faster Pipes? Linux, Win2000, WinXP Compared"
Splinton had this to say: "In

this article, Ed Bradford compares semaphores, mutexes and window's
critical sections. Pthreads look good, but Win2Ks critical sections are
twice as fast again!"

The computing equivalent of Area 51? A short while
back HP closed its calculator division. Many have thought HP's
calculator department was unprofitable. This was not the case. Many have
thought they had no innovation. This was not the case. Turns out that
management had 4% workforce to kill and they were part of the cut.

This article
explains more. It turns out they had designed several Linux based
PDA's ready to produce that were killed by management. Sounds
interesting? Go check it out.

The biggest expense was the 12 gross of Estes D engines ...
Satellite Designer writes: "The topic of low cost satellites
having been mooted here recently, I though I'd alert readers to another
such project. The HETE-2
satellite recently

located a cosmic gamma-ray burst precisely enough that (with a lot
of help from friends) an afterglow was detected, identifying its source.
HETE-2 cost $26 million, only 1/3 of what a "small" scientific satellite
normally costs.

A lot of commercial "off the shelf" technology went into HETE. Nothing
from Radio Shack, but there are quite a few parts from Digi-Key onboard.
You can't save money by using cheap parts (but you *can* save money by
using easily obtainable parts), and you can't achieve reliability by
using expensive parts (but you *can* help reliability by using the parts
best suited for your application). The radical thing about HETE's parts
selection was that it considered parts in the application context (as
one would do in a normal engineering process), rather than restricting
selection to a QPL assembled to meet irrelevant requirements.

The real trick to keeping costs down is to do the job with as small a
team as possible in the minimum time possible. Rather than employing a
large team of specialists, HETE's scientific investigators did much of
the engineering and technical work. A small, carefully selected
engineering team filled in the knowledge gaps."

Quitting isn't easy, and why bother?
dmarsh writes: "This
new
article from C|Net seems to be a
total contradiction to last week's

"Dump Broadband, Dig Out Your Modem!" thread's article. I guess the
important difference being that this one is backed up by an actual
survey by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association."

Goes to show, in a large group of people you can probably find at
least some who fit nearly any premise. As always, question the source ;)

<

Light Emitting Pictures On Standard Inkjet Printer

Here's your speakers. Do the TI's really have enough processing power for decoding MP3's?

TI is like Windows, it's the basic standard that everybody uses. The 89 and 92+ are the super-duper TIs, with the fancy CAS (computer algebra system). The 86 is the most powerful non-CAS TI, a very good calc. The 83/83+ is not recommended for nerds, it is lowly and weak. HP is like Macintosh, it's the longtime runner-up that is in some ways better than the TIs, and has its own crew of fiercely loyal followers, but will never gain back the marketshare it lost to TI. The HPs to look for are the 48GX and the 49G. Which is better? Well, follow along the Windows/Mac analogy. Both get the job done just fine as long as you know how to use them. Both have plenty of software (think games) support. It's hard to quantify one or the other as completely "better". For more on the TI vs HP subject, I offer a section of my TI-FAQ webpage, http://tifaq.calc.org/ti92vshp.htm. BTW, in case anybody is wondering, Sharp and Casio are bit players in the graphing calculator biz and are generally ignored. Ray Kremer, TI-86 owner

Actually, there's an article about Linux on a TI-89 at http://www.calc.org/ but it looks like bs to me :)
Adam Berlinsky-Schine

That's the strangest myth I've heard. First of all, when did Texas Instruments open a branch in Taiwan and rename the company? Second of all, I've had several TI calculators for several years and the keyboards have never "been bad." I like them better than HP calculators, and so do most people.
Adam Berlinsky-Schine

No, only the TI-89, TI-92, and TI-92+ Calculators use 68K processors. All the others (for our sake let's say TI-82 through TI-86) use a Z80 processor. And whoever said they wanted a TI-93 - save up all you want but the calculator doesn't exist :) (TI-92+ maybe?)
Adam Berlinsky-Schine

Yes, there are several programs that accomplish this. There's Telnet 83 for the TI-83 for one... then there's FTerm for the TI-92. There's others that I can't locate at the moment. But to sum up, yes it is possible already, but in theory this new eZ80 could make it more possible :)
Adam Berlinsky-Schine

Yes, there are several programs that accomplish this. There's Telnet 83 for the TI-83 for one... then there's FTerm for the TI-92. There's others that I can't locate at the moment. But to sum up, yes it is possible already, but in theory this new eZ80 could make it more possible :)
Adam Berlinsky-Schine

I guess my situtation is slightly different than yours, but when I'm coding for myself, screw documentation.
Adam Berlinsky-Schine