Slashdot Mirror
Overclocking Calculators?
Klar writes "If you're looking for something new to prove your tech prowess, Richard Piotter has a great how to on overclocking Texas Instruments graphing calculators. You can actually double the cpu speed, which is noticeable when graphing complex functions."
Too Much Time On Their Hands Department.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Slashdot, putting the "New" back in news.
Personally I think my calculator calculates rather well. If I was going to use it on a gaming platform(what's the point?) then I guess something like this would come in handy.
tsk tsk tsk how lame from the editors
I've seen this for the TI-83 a while ago. I have the TI-89 now and it's great for the classes I take. I've overclocked cpus (AMD K6-2), but you've got to have some balls or some money to try and overclock a $150 calculator.
It just seems to me that the risk outweighs the benefits.
Graphing complex functions is slow. Calculating integrals is slow. 3D graphs are abysmally slow. Speeding these functions up could be quite useful. Of course, you could just use Virtual TI on your PC if you wanted it to be really fast, or there's always Mathematica. I'm sure overclocking your calculator cuts the battery life in half or worse, which is why they are clocked so low by TI to begin with. Now if he could figure out a way for it to automatically overclock itself only while doing calculations (not waiting for input), then he might be onto something...
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Heh. Not only is this 'news' more than 5 years old, this also ran on Fark today about 6 hours earlier.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
My slide rule is a clock.... http://www.pulsarwatches.com/PulsarAssets/pdf/puls ar_rotary_slide_rule.pdfPulsar
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
The articles discuss putting in a switch so you can choose normal or turbo speeds. Anyone know if you can switch on the fly or does the calculator have to be off?
Laugh all you want, these calculators are capable of stuff that's really time consuming.
Put
Y1=(somefunction)
Y2=FnInt(Y1(X),X,0,X)
Y2 displays integral of Y1. This isn't docummented anywhere and not without a reason. Getting the plot of even a simple function like Y1=sin(X) takes some 5 minutes as the integral is calculated separately for each pixel. Put more sophisticated function for Y1, or put Y3=FnInt(Y2... to get second integral and wait 2 hours or so for results easily.
In this case overclocking serves saving the batteries. True at double speed the batteries are used up nearly twice as much, but running for a hour at a single speed will drain them more than running for half a hour at double speed.
And yeah, these "insane" times are quite reasonable. I've been writing some cool stuff for my TI82. Generating a fractal took maybe a hour or so. "brute forcing" some logical problem lasted only 15 minutes just thanks to some luck (the solution was within first 5% tested). I found the graphs of integrals useful - I entered the function on the start of a test and could test whether my calculations were correct when it was drawn about the middle (and I had to use the calculator for other calculations). It was actually pretty fast at "your generic" numerical methods, and as we were free to choose the platform/language for writing our "numerical methods" programs, I didn't have to show up in the lab even once whole semester, wrote everything on the calculator.
One thing that sucks is lack of recursion support, Even the Prog[NAME]/Return function works only 1 level deep. But even this can be solved by using lists instead of local variables, matrices instead of lists.
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This web page has not been updated since 2000... I remeber back in the day this was new and cool. 5 years though in internet time is like rediscovering the slide rule -- good job guys! I hear IBM are releasing the teletype II any day :)
its funny the progression that this story has taken -- it went from hackaday --> fark --> slashdot, and doubtless appeared on hackaday due to someone trying this trick out.
This is the SECOND repeat of a hackaday post in less than 24 hours.
That makes 3 or 4 in as many days.
How about something original, not plagiarized from another site WHICH WAS PROMOTED ON SLASHDOT A LITTLE WHILE AGO!!!!
it seems that many articles are being taken from http://hackaday.com This and the altiods mp3 player were both featured there.
If you want 3D and color on a hand held graphing calculator, I think you are missing the point. The fact that we have these graphing calculators now is a real folly of our education system. People feel that they don't have to learn mathematics because their calculator does it for them. This is going to get you into serious trouble down the road. I've been through it. My first year university I bought me a shiney new TI-89 thinking that calculus will be a breeze for me.
It sure was! Just plug in my integral for x^2 and wow, symbolic calculations. Let's fast forward 6 years. The problems I encounter in physics are not the most complicated, but complicated enough. I've quickly learned that you can't trust the result of these calculators. In fact, 90% of the time, the calculator can't even do the computation. Simple problems on paper are impossible on my Ti-89.
My advice: buy a $5 add/sub/mult/div calculator and save yourself alot of headache. Learn the math inside and out and visualize the graph yourself on a piece of paper. Not only will you understand what's going on in the mathematics, but you will also save yourself a few bucks which is better spent on beer.
My Ti-89 now is used solely as a paperweight. Seriously, worst purchase I ever made.
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right. --Isaac Asimov
You surely jest. The investors being increasing a pile of sheeple morons, intermixed with a few PHBs are demanding not profits (although in their deluded perception that is probably what they are thinking) but a buzzword-spewing, mindless technophobes with acting abilites to play a "part" of a "visionary" CEO, because that makes them feel that they "understand" tech companies. Look up the ./ article on buzzword bullshit just on the front page today, this is the same thing in different form. Hence Carly Fiorina, a total dumb-fuck whose claim to fame is revolving in the "right" circles of self-congratulatory aristocratic-born dimiwts. HP as a tech company is toast, but HP as yet-another mediocracy mass-consumerism crapola maker tied to fads and whims of "pop culture" and locked in endless "race to the bottom" against Chinese crap makers is just beginning.