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No finding ROMS or emulators

I mean, there's links right there. This stuff isn't hard to find.

or a suitable computer on which to run them

Absolutely any desktop or laptop made in the last 20 years, any tablet or smartphone, and some graphing calculators.

controllers

Use a keyboard if you don't have a gamepad, or grab one at walmart for $20. The original NES controller was godawful.

Anyone got this emulator running under Linux?

"Welcome to the TilEm homepage"

Giving a kid a powerful toy and then telling them not to play with it is the height of absurdity.

This reminds me of TI-83s in middle/high school. You weren't supposed to install games onto them, and teachers would often threaten to wipe them if they found stuff installed (tbf, the concern was probably mainly cheating tools), but everyone had Tetris and Galaxian and Dying Eyes and Hegemony.

and not a programming environment, there are a buncha TI (and other calculator) emulators. For example:

http://www.zophar.net/ti.html
http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/84/8442.html

Personally, I'd just open up a spreadsheet program. If you need an algebraic equation solver, go with R, Matlab or possibly Mathomatic:
http://www.mathomatic.org/math/

Yes, they are available. Since you already have the calculator, you can dump your ROM.

well, there is this

http://hackaday.com/tag/ti-83/
http://www.ticalc.org/basics/calculators/index.html
http://www.ticalc.org/hardware/cables/serial.html
http://education.ti.com/guidebooks/sdk/83p/sdk83pguide.pdf
http://sami.ticalc.org/irlink/e_hard.htm
http://smallrobot.bizland.com/Instructions.pdf
http://www.mathinscience.info/public/mathbots_challenge/mathbot_chall_lesson.htm
http://www.razorrobotics.com/knowledge/?title=TI_Connect
http://www.free-scientific-calculator.com/texas-instruments-graph-link-connectivity-kit/
http://blog.makezine.com/2006/02/19/how-to-connect-a-ti83-to/

http://hackaday.com/tag/ti-83/
http://www.ticalc.org/basics/calculators/index.html
http://www.ticalc.org/hardware/cables/serial.html
http://education.ti.com/guidebooks/sdk/83p/sdk83pguide.pdf
http://sami.ticalc.org/irlink/e_hard.htm
http://smallrobot.bizland.com/Instructions.pdf
http://www.mathinscience.info/public/mathbots_challenge/mathbot_chall_lesson.htm
http://www.razorrobotics.com/knowledge/?title=TI_Connect
http://www.free-scientific-calculator.com/texas-instruments-graph-link-connectivity-kit/
http://blog.makezine.com/2006/02/19/how-to-connect-a-ti83-to/

http://hackaday.com/tag/ti-83/
http://www.ticalc.org/basics/calculators/index.html
http://www.ticalc.org/hardware/cables/serial.html
http://education.ti.com/guidebooks/sdk/83p/sdk83pguide.pdf
http://sami.ticalc.org/irlink/e_hard.htm
http://smallrobot.bizland.com/Instructions.pdf
http://www.mathinscience.info/public/mathbots_challenge/mathbot_chall_lesson.htm
http://www.razorrobotics.com/knowledge/?title=TI_Connect
http://www.free-scientific-calculator.com/texas-instruments-graph-link-connectivity-kit/
http://blog.makezine.com/2006/02/19/how-to-connect-a-ti83-to/

I just noticed that this distro uses JWM, which was written by legendary TI-83 programmer Joe Wingbermuehle. If you went to high school in 1998-2002 and had a TI83 or TI83+, you might have had some of his programs, such as the Ion assembly shell, Boxworld, Breakout, Diamonds, Dstar, Landmine, or Jezzball.

Wow. "I don't remember something so it never existed."

Ignoring all other cases (which are numerous), I know for a fact that Texas Instruments has a very long history of calling programs for their calculators "Apps," (short for "applications"). They had app development contests in 2001 and 2002 (and apparently 2003: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/8/89/89529.html ). They specifically referred to anything created with their Flash SDK as "apps." Do a "find" for "flash app" on this page from 2000: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/4/43/43266.html

Wow. "I don't remember something so it never existed."

Ignoring all other cases (which are numerous), I know for a fact that Texas Instruments has a very long history of calling programs for their calculators "Apps," (short for "applications"). They had app development contests in 2001 and 2002 (and apparently 2003: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/8/89/89529.html ). They specifically referred to anything created with their Flash SDK as "apps." Do a "find" for "flash app" on this page from 2000: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/4/43/43266.html

No matter what, flatly ban everything that has even a hint of a rumor of the networking capacity.

A TI-83 can get on the internet.
Good luck with that ;-)

Graphic calculators have no networking capability.

That didnt stop some pretty smart students.

http://sami.ticalc.org/irlink/e_intro.htm

Wow... Haven't thought of TICalcs in forever. I just dug up some of my old assembly.

Afrosoft Bounceballs

Wow, did I really comment every line?

And how about the binary

Download Description

BounceBall is an *oldsk00* pong clone. In the author's oppinion, it is very fun (obviously). The game is only 898bytes, and has extensive documentation in the source code. Good to learn by.

I really wrote like that back in 2000?! Wow... And someone downloaded it 5 times this week?!

It's kind of like what they said about tattoos. What I thought was good 10 years ago, I think is absolutely horrible now.

Wow... Haven't thought of TICalcs in forever. I just dug up some of my old assembly.

Afrosoft Bounceballs

Wow, did I really comment every line?

And how about the binary

Download Description

BounceBall is an *oldsk00* pong clone. In the author's oppinion, it is very fun (obviously). The game is only 898bytes, and has extensive documentation in the source code. Good to learn by.

I really wrote like that back in 2000?! Wow... And someone downloaded it 5 times this week?!

It's kind of like what they said about tattoos. What I thought was good 10 years ago, I think is absolutely horrible now.

I had Wolfenstien :)

Of course I've done most of my calc game playing on an 89, those things are nuts.

You can hook your TI-85 up to a computer connected to the internet.

indeed.

Seems the developers have had some projects stored away until Ndless was released:

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/426/42630.html

From the program description: "gbc4nspire is a Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulator for the TI-Nspire and TI-Nspire CAS, written from scratch in ARM assembly"

Pretty impressive, if you ask me.

Don't know how good it will work, as I don't run Linux or have an N900, but here is a Ti emulator for Ti89-92+ that has Linux, Win32, and Mac ports. Maybe you can give it a spin and tell us how well it works? It wants GTK on Windows and I have no desire to install GTK.

Also, generally speaking the alternative OS that you load onto the iPhone, Xbox, Wii, NDS, etc are all modified versions of the console's native software, or generally otherwise use some other copyrighted material (Linux boxes excluded). For example, a lot of the new DSi karts have to masquerade as a copyrighted, trademarked game to get past the system protection. The iPhone is just a modified version of the iPhone's native, copyrighted software.

But hacking your TI is a completely clean case. The OS is being replaced, it can't be used to play otherwise inaccessible pirated content, the "homebrew" community for TI calculators is huge and well documented. Essentially, it's a perfect case unpolluted by other copyright questions. The judge would just be setting a precedent: "Do you have the right to load a different OS on your hardware than the one it shipped with?" Period. It's actually a brilliant tactic, that can then be applied like a tool to other cases. I really hope this one doesn't get settled, and we get a hard-and-fast ruling on it.

There was a time when TI encouraged the enthusiast community. They even distributed a huge collection of enthusiast-developed software with some of their calculators...

Until this happened:
http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/5/53/53866.html

This is probably when someone realized that the "enthusiast community" was a bunch of kids who didn't have enough common sense to refrain from submitting X-rated programs to TI, and things went downhill from there...

TiLP works just fine

What makes them so smart? Is TI selling more calculators because you can play games on them, or because some kid has to buy one to do his homework? I had a TI-85 in high school and played games all through whatever math class I was in at the time, but I would have had one regardless of whether it did anything other than my homework.

My stance on the subject is that TI would stand to benefit financially to one degree or another from any and all of the following:

• Enthusiasts who prefer TI calculators because they are easier to explore
• Increased interest in a TI calculator because an enthusiast has built software for it that doesn't exist on other calculators
• Increased overall interest in TI calculators due to available software
• Increased quality of their product by observing the nature and intent of third-party changes
• Increased usage of their products by third parties (professors, etc.) who have co-opted their functionality into other areas
• Greater competitive edge through direct exposure to user feedback, also by monitoring enthusiast communities
• Increased sales of higher-powered (i.e., more expensive) calculators since they are capable of more resource-intensive modifications than the lower models
• Classes they can sell to schools about modifying their calculators
• Literature that they can sell on the subject of modifying their products
• Identification of quality persons from the enthusiast community for future hire

This is off the top of my head. As one who participated in the ticalc.org modding community when it was all Z-shell and assembly hacks, I can say for sure that I benefited from third-party applications and learned quite a lot by programming low-level software. A lot has changed since then, but I can attest firsthand to the benefits of an open TI calculator.

Really, though, what does TI have to lose? Has the enthusiast community as it stands actually harmed them? If so, I'm not aware of it.

Try TiLP 2. Made by said TI-homebrew community.

Ztetris by Jimmy Mardell for TI calculators is, by far, my favorite version of tetris. I have yet to find another version of tetris that has the option in multiplayer to send scrambled lines to your opponent. If anyone is aware of one, please share! The world of assembly compiled TI-85 tetrising is increasingly becoming lonely.

Limitation breeds creativity, perhaps?

Absolutely. Until I discovered that you could use the six lists as relatively unlimited variable space, my early games on my TI-82 were limited to 27 variables (A-Z + theta) and 37 goto labels.

Once I pushed the boundaries of memory it forced me to use proper looping and drop the goto statements. I discovered this because, as my projects got larger and I mixed goto with loops, my programs kept running out of memory. This is because TI-OS creates memory tags every time you enter a control path (and remove them when you exit), and using goto to exit a control path means those tags remain hanging in memory.

My greatest creation was a 2-player scorched earth clone, I was really proud of that one. I never could get multiplayer over the link working, as it was just too slow.

A lot of people that are now in their early twenties got exposed to 68k ASM with the TI-89 and TI-92 and z80 ASM with the TI-83 and TI-84 calculators.

What originally got me started programming was my TI-83 in 9th grade Algebra 2. I was horribly unprepared for the class so I learned how to make programs to do the quadratic formula, solve equations, expand polynomials and the like. Now this was just in TI-Basic but translating the math into code really helped me understand the material.

Then I found ticalc which was and probably still is the best resource for everything involving TI calculators. I must have printed almost a thousand pages of code, books, FAQs, and tutorials. I'd trace through the code to learn what I could from and then try writing something myself. Most of the games used z80 assembly and there were tons of them to look through. I think early exposure to assembly definitely improved my ability to work in higher level languages.

A few years later for Calculus I got a TI-89 which used the Motorola 68k processor, however I was never as interested in learning to program the TI-89 as I was with the TI-83. I'm sure I'm not the only one whose first exposure to programming was on the TI calculators, they probably bred a new generation of programmers through their calculators.

TI-92 kama sutra I remember a TI-89 version, with 7-level greyscale as well.

There is more than one kind of calculator so there isn't any "the" version. Look here for lots of games:

http://www.ticalc.org/

That's where I went back when I needed calculator games(but you might have a Casio or something).

Apparently, they removed "inappropriate material":

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/archive/index.php/t-31456.html

It's the internets, there is a Google, you'll figure something out.

All of us math students with Ti-89/92 partial with the ZX can emulate it right on the calculator. No more waiting to be at home to play our favorite ZX programs. (mind you the screen may be small, but it's still better than nothing!)

Wow, the first programming language I learned was z80 assembly :-). I use to make games for the ti86.

here is a side scroller i made written all in assembly (includes animated screen shot)

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/232/ 23280.html

The things I learned:
1. 4mhz processor is REALLY fast!
2. How the stack works.
3. How absolute and relative jumps work.
4. How to create "objects" and implement "methods"
5. How the smallest variable, the register works.

I have to say that after making games in assembly, I am actually disappointed in how well the current consoles handle them. I would expect them to be able to crazy things with the hardware they are given. That is also why I am interested in the ps3, it forces programmers to understand the underlying hardware.

hp49g+ - Pros:
SD card reader
RPN AND Algebraic notation
Speaker
MUCH faster than the 89Ti
Powerful CAS library
Built-in assembly

hp49g+ - Cons:
Lower resolution
Older models have worthless keyboards
Harder to use
Smaller userbase

89Ti - Pros:
Much larger screen
A truely gigantic userbase; some INSANE things have been done with this calculator, and this is where the 89 really shines:
F-Zero for the calculator: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/13/13 3/133789.html
Headphone support: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/386/ 38629.html
Gameboy emulation: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/369/ 36950.html
Radium overclocking: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/1/15/ 15975.html (just kidding)
Geometer's Sketchpad: http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/p roductDetail/us_sketchpad_89.html
And much more.

89Ti - Cons:
Slow 3D graphing (a program allows a TI-83+ to do this faster than TI's built-in 3D grapher for the 89, even if you take resolution into account)
CAS sometimes behaves oddly (try the cube root of -27)
Much slower than hp49g+
No RPN (third party RPN programs aren't very good)

Well, that's my take on the situation. I've used both calcs and I've tried to be unbiased, and it's really up to you to decide. I personally have an 89 because I love my virtual globe, my tesseract grapher, ELIZA, my star chart, my All Your Base Are Belong To Us screensaver, and such. At the same time, I am envious of the hp49g+'s superior speed and graphing capabilities, and it (the hp49g+) is really fun to use. However, the title of ultimate calculator would have to go to one of the following:

Qonos: http://www.hpcalc.org/qonos.php (it looks so cool!)
TI-Nspire CAS: http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/n onProductMulti/nspire_cas.html (even if it is ugly)
Voyage 400: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/8/85/ 85069.html (I wish)

hp49g+ - Pros:
SD card reader
RPN AND Algebraic notation
Speaker
MUCH faster than the 89Ti
Powerful CAS library
Built-in assembly

hp49g+ - Cons:
Lower resolution
Older models have worthless keyboards
Harder to use
Smaller userbase

89Ti - Pros:
Much larger screen
A truely gigantic userbase; some INSANE things have been done with this calculator, and this is where the 89 really shines:
F-Zero for the calculator: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/13/13 3/133789.html
Headphone support: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/386/ 38629.html
Gameboy emulation: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/369/ 36950.html
Radium overclocking: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/1/15/ 15975.html (just kidding)
Geometer's Sketchpad: http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/p roductDetail/us_sketchpad_89.html
And much more.

89Ti - Cons:
Slow 3D graphing (a program allows a TI-83+ to do this faster than TI's built-in 3D grapher for the 89, even if you take resolution into account)
CAS sometimes behaves oddly (try the cube root of -27)
Much slower than hp49g+
No RPN (third party RPN programs aren't very good)

Well, that's my take on the situation. I've used both calcs and I've tried to be unbiased, and it's really up to you to decide. I personally have an 89 because I love my virtual globe, my tesseract grapher, ELIZA, my star chart, my All Your Base Are Belong To Us screensaver, and such. At the same time, I am envious of the hp49g+'s superior speed and graphing capabilities, and it (the hp49g+) is really fun to use. However, the title of ultimate calculator would have to go to one of the following:

Qonos: http://www.hpcalc.org/qonos.php (it looks so cool!)
TI-Nspire CAS: http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/n onProductMulti/nspire_cas.html (even if it is ugly)
Voyage 400: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/8/85/ 85069.html (I wish)

hp49g+ - Pros:
SD card reader
RPN AND Algebraic notation
Speaker
MUCH faster than the 89Ti
Powerful CAS library
Built-in assembly

hp49g+ - Cons:
Lower resolution
Older models have worthless keyboards
Harder to use
Smaller userbase

89Ti - Pros:
Much larger screen
A truely gigantic userbase; some INSANE things have been done with this calculator, and this is where the 89 really shines:
F-Zero for the calculator: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/13/13 3/133789.html
Headphone support: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/386/ 38629.html
Gameboy emulation: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/369/ 36950.html
Radium overclocking: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/1/15/ 15975.html (just kidding)
Geometer's Sketchpad: http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/p roductDetail/us_sketchpad_89.html
And much more.

89Ti - Cons:
Slow 3D graphing (a program allows a TI-83+ to do this faster than TI's built-in 3D grapher for the 89, even if you take resolution into account)
CAS sometimes behaves oddly (try the cube root of -27)
Much slower than hp49g+
No RPN (third party RPN programs aren't very good)

Well, that's my take on the situation. I've used both calcs and I've tried to be unbiased, and it's really up to you to decide. I personally have an 89 because I love my virtual globe, my tesseract grapher, ELIZA, my star chart, my All Your Base Are Belong To Us screensaver, and such. At the same time, I am envious of the hp49g+'s superior speed and graphing capabilities, and it (the hp49g+) is really fun to use. However, the title of ultimate calculator would have to go to one of the following:

Qonos: http://www.hpcalc.org/qonos.php (it looks so cool!)
TI-Nspire CAS: http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/n onProductMulti/nspire_cas.html (even if it is ugly)
Voyage 400: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/8/85/ 85069.html (I wish)

hp49g+ - Pros:
SD card reader
RPN AND Algebraic notation
Speaker
MUCH faster than the 89Ti
Powerful CAS library
Built-in assembly

hp49g+ - Cons:
Lower resolution
Older models have worthless keyboards
Harder to use
Smaller userbase

89Ti - Pros:
Much larger screen
A truely gigantic userbase; some INSANE things have been done with this calculator, and this is where the 89 really shines:
F-Zero for the calculator: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/13/13 3/133789.html
Headphone support: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/386/ 38629.html
Gameboy emulation: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/369/ 36950.html
Radium overclocking: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/1/15/ 15975.html (just kidding)
Geometer's Sketchpad: http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/p roductDetail/us_sketchpad_89.html
And much more.

89Ti - Cons:
Slow 3D graphing (a program allows a TI-83+ to do this faster than TI's built-in 3D grapher for the 89, even if you take resolution into account)
CAS sometimes behaves oddly (try the cube root of -27)
Much slower than hp49g+
No RPN (third party RPN programs aren't very good)

Well, that's my take on the situation. I've used both calcs and I've tried to be unbiased, and it's really up to you to decide. I personally have an 89 because I love my virtual globe, my tesseract grapher, ELIZA, my star chart, my All Your Base Are Belong To Us screensaver, and such. At the same time, I am envious of the hp49g+'s superior speed and graphing capabilities, and it (the hp49g+) is really fun to use. However, the title of ultimate calculator would have to go to one of the following:

Qonos: http://www.hpcalc.org/qonos.php (it looks so cool!)
TI-Nspire CAS: http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/n onProductMulti/nspire_cas.html (even if it is ugly)
Voyage 400: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/8/85/ 85069.html (I wish)

hp49g+ - Pros:
SD card reader
RPN AND Algebraic notation
Speaker
MUCH faster than the 89Ti
Powerful CAS library
Built-in assembly

hp49g+ - Cons:
Lower resolution
Older models have worthless keyboards
Harder to use
Smaller userbase

89Ti - Pros:
Much larger screen
A truely gigantic userbase; some INSANE things have been done with this calculator, and this is where the 89 really shines:
F-Zero for the calculator: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/13/13 3/133789.html
Headphone support: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/386/ 38629.html
Gameboy emulation: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/369/ 36950.html
Radium overclocking: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/1/15/ 15975.html (just kidding)
Geometer's Sketchpad: http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/p roductDetail/us_sketchpad_89.html
And much more.

89Ti - Cons:
Slow 3D graphing (a program allows a TI-83+ to do this faster than TI's built-in 3D grapher for the 89, even if you take resolution into account)
CAS sometimes behaves oddly (try the cube root of -27)
Much slower than hp49g+
No RPN (third party RPN programs aren't very good)

Well, that's my take on the situation. I've used both calcs and I've tried to be unbiased, and it's really up to you to decide. I personally have an 89 because I love my virtual globe, my tesseract grapher, ELIZA, my star chart, my All Your Base Are Belong To Us screensaver, and such. At the same time, I am envious of the hp49g+'s superior speed and graphing capabilities, and it (the hp49g+) is really fun to use. However, the title of ultimate calculator would have to go to one of the following:

Qonos: http://www.hpcalc.org/qonos.php (it looks so cool!)
TI-Nspire CAS: http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/n onProductMulti/nspire_cas.html (even if it is ugly)
Voyage 400: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/8/85/ 85069.html (I wish)

I agree with you on every aspect here. Including missing the calc when left at home. In a moment of inspiration one day, I downloaded the VirtualTI emulator from http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/84/8 442.html. Its a sweet interface, with essentially a picture of the calculator on screen. It does exactly everything you'd expect, but you need to download the ROM for the calculator you want to use. I happened to build a link cable way back in high school to put zshell and games on my calc, and copied off the rom at that time so I had it lying around on an old floppy disk. Worth checking out if you use your calculator that often (and forget it occasionally).

I was forced to get a TI-85 in college when the calculus courses started requiring calculators as part of the ciriculum. I still have it and use it, happily to this day. The newer TIs are much better than my antiquated old thing (more memory, better connectivity, and Flash RAM for long-term storage), so I would certainly recommend the TI-89 Titanium or the Voyage 200. The feature sets and prices are pretty similar, but I would be worried that some professors or grad students might balk at allowing the Voyage 200 in an exam.

Lots of folk pooh-pooh the TI calculators as being inferior to the HP RPN models, but I have, as I said, been very happy with mine. You can write fairly sophisticated programs on them, and the newer ones even allow you to do some of the programming from a PC and transfer the program to the calculator over a USB cable. My only real gripe with the TIs (or any of the graphing calculators, for that matter) is that the displays haven't gotten much better over the past 20 years: they all, pretty much, still low resolution monochrome LCDs, many without a backlight. The processors, memory capacity and interface options have all progressed, but the displays have stagnated.

Maybe Apple can give us an iCalc to update the graphing calculator for the twenty-first century, or something (actually, it would be a pretty neat third-party add-on for the video iPod: a dock that slips around the iPod and gives you a full scientific calculator keypad, using the iPod for display and storage).

Having grown up in the era preceding the rise of the graphing calculator, however, I can say that there is a serious downside to learning higher math with a sophisticated calculational crutch: you may not get as good an instinct for the math as you would have if you had been forced to do the graphs by hand. I suppose that, in an age when even elementary schoolers are being given calculators, it's something of a lost cause to lament the loss of manual mathematical skills.

If you want a multi-purpose machine, the Motorola 68000 based TI-89 wins. You can easily program it in C or directly in Assembly. An IDE for Linux and Windows is available at http://tigcc.ticalc.org/

I have a good old TI-83 that I got 10 years ago, and the only problem I have is that it has been fazed-out, so I have geek envy since some games/programs for the 83+(storage)/84(processor speed/storage) won't work on it.

Personally though, my favorite was my brother's TI-92, but that isn't allowed since it has a full qwerty keyboard on it, which is retarded since I could still program just as quickly from a computer. I always wanted the new version of it the Voyage 2000, but no one carries them.

As far as it being fragile, my brother's TI-92 lasted until the graph-link port was destroyed in an accident, but still functioned. Then he bought a TI-89 and he has been using that since they first released (1999?). Except for when a professor required him to turn in a MatLab program, he preferred to use it, with the large function library built in, and the massive quantities of programs on http://www.ticalc.org/ he never needed anything else.

I'd like to say that the TI89 wins this competition hands down.

Forget the symbolic algebra and calculus. It can play F-Zero and ExciteBike!!! How else could I have made it through high school if it weren't for my trusty (and quite sturdy) TI-89?

I'd like to say that the TI89 wins this competition hands down.

Forget the symbolic algebra and calculus. It can play F-Zero and ExciteBike!!! How else could I have made it through high school if it weren't for my trusty (and quite sturdy) TI-89?

So In US and the other two countries, E does not equal mc^2?

Can't all American Scientists simply get a calculator like this one that can convert units (even obscure ones like R!) and simply use it whenever in touch with metric-unit scientists?

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/390/ 39028.html

Who says we can't have grayscale porn?

Or a not so shitty mp3 player, for that matter.

Too late:
http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/13/13 7/137972.html

As a video gamer, my opinion counts the most.

So everyone listen to me :-p.

Xbox 360: I dont know anyone who has it. Maybe I am getting too old (still a teen though). I want a next generation system but I am willing to wait because I know the first system out is not always the best one. Dreamcast *ahem* Which I still love :-).

Wii: This is something that shocked me in a good way. I was just wondering how videogames would be in the future, and this one hit that spot on the head. After looking at the controller and watching people play it at e3, I am ready to forget how to strafe and shoot and circle around the guy and own them with my analogs (My teacher would write RO). Because games these days even first person shooters are confusing as hell. I seriously felt like it was uncivilized or something trying to play with a analog stick. And then I got back to reality and I realize that this was my only choice. FOR NOW :-D.

*off topic* I was playing halo and owning my lil cuz, untill he took out his sword and kept killing me. I thought their was some skill behind using it but now I learned you just look at the guy and press the shoot button as fast as you can HOW RETARTED IS THAT. and obviously being an old school gamer I could press my fire button the quickest :-p.

PS3: The current discussion. First I would like to say I have a pretty decent job and I am living with my parents and going to college so I am not really worried about cash. So my opinion might sound stupid. I WANT IT. I WANT IT NOW. I know I am not gono play it at all after I get my wii, but I still want it. I am not getting a freaken hi-deff tv to see huge pixels and miss drawn shadows. The fact is I am living in the year 2006 and I want to see some tech that will blow my mind. The cell processor sounds crazy. I am majoring in CS, actually almost done with it, and the cell processor is something to really look at from a scientific point of view (for me any ways). I have made games before for my ti-86 :-D. http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/232/ 23280.html (screenshots included) that is a freaken side scroller on a z80 4mhz processor baby and I soo wish I had another processor processing just graphical crap that wasn't really important to the game play but for "coolness".

So wii is a given. And my other choice is between xbox 360 and ps3. I have xbox and I truthfully play my dreamcast more then the xbox. Kinda sad I know. So I am willing to pay for a pretty looking ps3 :-).
PS: can we get a freaken spellchecker in here. What is this web 1.0?

Before I had a device to transfer programs to my graphing calculator when I was middle-school aged - I would print off the program from http://www.ticalc.org/ and type it into my calculator. I learned a good amount of programming from this simple task - dissecting the code as I entered it and trying to figure out what it all meant. My first programming experience on a computer was Visual Basic. Now it seems like not even a programming language. I coded a simple Jeopardy game that I ran one time in my French class. My goal in programming VB was to code some sort of GUI application where I could store my collection of baseball cards. All the programs out there that would do this were expensive and cost a bit of money (especially for a kid) so I set out trying to code this. Unfortunately I can't say I got very far. I tried using some sort of database thing that obviously wasn't going to work. I can honestly say that I hated VB - I really had no direction in syntax and structure and the code I produced was just terrible. My first computer science class in high school originally dealt with programming in BASIC. The textbook must have been from the 80's and most of the programs we had to write were ridiculously simple. The class did give me a very good foundation on all the simple programming concepts. As my senior year approached I had wanted to self-study for the AP exam which was Java based. I attempted for about two-weeks to learn it and gave up. All of the web tutorials were just terrible and I didn't understand a method from a class and really the whole concept of object-oriented-programming. I fooled around with php code some times too but the mySQL aspect of it was way over my head. I finally learned Java in an intro college course and see the beauty of OOP, but I can't say that I think it would be easy to learn on your own. I think that the biggest issue with learning a language is figuring out what you want to do with it. Every kid wants to make some sort of GUI - many want to program games. But, even now, I think that programming a simple game in java is pretty difficult (not mentioning that it is pretty difficult to just learn to program a gui in java). Sorry for the long post - my main points were that the biggest reason kids don't code is because of the lack of freely available simple tutorials for the beginner programmer, the difficult nature of building a simple gui, and figuring out what needs coding.