Slashdot Mirror
TI Calculators Play Movies
ipapusha writes "TI Calculator enthusiasts rejoice. A few weeks ago, Dan Englender released a new flash application usb8x. Usb8x is a driver that interfaces with the On-the-Go USB port in the TI-84 Plus and TI-84 Plus Silver Edition. It is designed to be used by other programmers to create drivers for a variety of USB peripherals, including a keyboard and mouse. Already, ticalc.org's own Michael Vincent has interfaced his Lexar JumpDrive to play The Matrix's famous lobby scene. (mirror) ."
Here's another mirror if necessary:
http://xaxxon.slackworks.com/2005-08-16-usb.wmv
Yeah, but does it run linux?
*Dodges Tomato*
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
I must be old. I remember the time where calculators were used to do calculations and even plotting a nice graphic of a function.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
I'd ask if it'd run OSX86, but there's way too many buttons. Maybe if it had a scroll ball, though.
i still remember getting one of the first external hard drives for the TI-85. some home grown kit with zshell drivers. it was awesome.
so what calculating functions would need color graphics? like the code editing software that automatically colors tags and modules, could there be a benifit to a color display in high end calculator. Aside from playing movies that is. :)
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
I had a TI-99/4A that hooked up to a TV and it never played movies - you could only change the terminal colors with BASIC!
Get your Unix fortune now!
Student was expelled from school when he accidentally played loud porn in a classroom during an exam.
1) Make calculators
2) Make calculators that play movies
3) ???
4) ???
5) Profit
...TI calcs have been able to play movies for a long time now. TItanium MultiMedia (TIMM) encodes a movie file to a native format for playback on TI calcs. Of course, this new project is much more impressive if it is decoding standard .avi / .mpg files on the fly.
Some things clearly must be done... just because you can.
It looks more like the Matrix than the Matrix...
Just in time for my senior year of high school...
"I wasn't playing games on my calculator... honest!"
This sig left blank for page turns.
I want to see how it looks on a TI-89.
What CPU have these things got? And why do they need something powerful enough to play video? What are people trying to calculate? PI to 1 million places?
that this was one on a TI. It would have been much cooler on a HP. Still a nice hack though.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you TI fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of my calculator (a TI-89) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to invert a 7 by 7 matrix. 20 minutes. At home, on my HP48 running at 4 Mhz, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this TI, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this matrix inversion, The calculator will not work. It has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various TI calculators, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a TI that has run faster than its HP counterpart, despite the TI's faster chip architecture. My Casio FX-100 runs faster than this 12 Mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the TI is a superior machine.
TI addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use TI calculators over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
*Throws out DVD Player and Laptop*
I don't need these anymore! I've got my TI-84!
The dithering looks like crap. My old HP-49G supports grayscale, what about TI calculators?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The ti86 has an interrupt which is called ~186 times per second. By toggling the graphics viewport every two then one cycles, you could get a very realistic-looking four level greyscale setup. Do the newer models no longer have such a feature? Or is this down to slower CPUs?
Someone with enough skill to program this chose fame on /. over adding to his or her portfolio of game mods. One is a basically useless gimmick. The other could actually be worth a damn and people would enjoy using it.
I'm not sure if this particular "matrix function" is going to be smiled upon by college linear algebra professors...
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I must be old. I remember the time where calculators were used to do calculations and even plotting a nice graphic of a function.
You're a young whipper snapper if you "remember" plotting a nice graphic. The true old coots will remember way back when punching in 710.77345 and turning the display upside down was about as much fun as a person could have on a calculator (this trick doesn't even work on the newer bit-mapped font-based calculators). Of course as technology improved, I wasted many an hour playing "Moon landing simulator" on an HP-25 (until I turned the calculator off and lost what was in RAM).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Funny, on old Russian calculators you could make
an upside down something that roughly translates
as "suck d*ck" (07931505), although some letters
are latin and some cyrillic. Ah, the memories.
CmdrTaco: You know, we haven't had the chance to use that great 'Blue and Red Pill' icon for the Matrix section in a while. I really miss that. They were good movies, and while some might argue that they don't deserve their own section and icon, I believe they are truly a geek phenomenon.
ScuttleMonkey: Hey, why don't we post this story about using calculators to play movies. Some guy played The Matrix on his TI, it's just the excuse we need. Now everyone who visits the homepage will see the icon and think 'Wow, something about The Matrix! I am interested in that story.'
CmdrTaco: You know, that's just crazy enough to work. Well done ScuttleMonkey, when you get home tonight there'll be another storey on your parents' house. You can finally move out of the basement. Now, all we need is some news on The Hobbit movie and the One True Ring will shine on the homepage for all to see!
Disclaimer: Post written under influence of a few Pub Quiz beers.
- HM
What the Hell?!? I thought I uninstalled this crap.
For those of you tuning in on your TI calculators:
/\
N=NEO
G=GUY
T=TRIN
Act One:
N G
|-R ~~~~~~*X <- Bullet time
/\ /\
Act Two:
|---Nice shot.
|
T
B <----- N
/\ |
|---"Whoa. Nice Latex"
Act Three:
>-Z
|---- "Whoa. Nice punch"
Could've done it in 3 lines of RPN, incidentally.
Please help metamoderate.
I wrote a program years ago that would convert videos to a TI calculator assembly program. That didn't end up on Slashdot, but if you want to check it out (with screenshots):
/ 15079.html
:)
http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/150
Remove the space from the URL I guess.
Of course, USB is nice and all, but the video-on-calc thing has been done before. By me
Nowadays kids do 55378008. All I have to say about it is: goddamnit.
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
We all know the next logical step... All I had on my calc when I went to high school was falldown and pheonix. Shit compared to watching porn on a calc in class. Nobody would suspect it!
Does it come with 5.1 Dolby Surround? :)
I believe the right answer is:
"All I want is a calculator that can calculate".
or something.
i used to send 53518 on pager.. but of course since i'm french this means "kiss". :)
I used to write Basic programs on my TI-83Plus in Calc class....now they can watch matrix.... How much learning can they do?
-Palal
And the number of people found jacking off watching their calculators dramatically increases...
Trading games on your calculator is a thing of the past. Take it one step further and trade pornos! Instead of playing Mario in class, you can watch him strip! That is, if it suits your tastes.
"We'll just ban graphing calculators and make you guys do it the harder way!"
Counting on fingers and toes?
TI Calculators break the rules of tech - they don't really get much more powerful, and definetly don't get cheaper with time. I bought my i-89 about 5 years ago, for 140 dollars. I just checked and it's 136 dollars (for titanium - it has some more memory and usb) on Amazon. As far as i know, no TI calculator has come out that is the same size and more powerful, and prices have not come down at all. Does TI really have that much of a monopoly on the high-end calculator market? I thought back then that TI graphing calculators would run 10 times faster and be in color by now, and I know they could be for the price.
I had a TI59 in high school, to which I had added a joystick as well as an interface to control my room. With the joystick, it was possible to play games like moonlanding where the printer would be the screen. The calculuator was programmed to turn on and off the lights in my room. A screenshot of the two peripherals. Of course, there was some surgergy necessary, but the TI59 had survived all.
It only took thirteen years to come up with something that has the same crappy resolution of Atari's Gameboy Pit Fighter port.
Okay, so it is cool and the content itself way better than Pit Fighter. Whole new way of graphing a matrix.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
...but I won't be scared when it's just (extremely ninja-cool R-rated) video. I'm still waiting for someone to hack audio on these calculator things.
When someone makes a T.I. grapher chirp "yeah you know they call me T.I. but You Don't Know Me" then I'll be scared of the professors. Or scratching my head in confusion.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
For those who enjoyed that bit of lo-fi, be sure to check out the Dot Matrix Symphony... It's a bunch of dot matrix printers all making music (though some call it noise).
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
"If you can watch the Matrix... you can also watch pornos."
Already done, years ago. Back in 94/95 a friend of mine had 'porn images' on his calculator. I remember being impressed that they actually pulled off shades of gray with the imagery. Turns out they did a neat flickery trick with the image to simulate that.
Sadly, the lack of image quality on the porn made the shades of gray more interesting. Still, it made the nerd clique a little more popular for a day or two.
"Derp de derp."
It is evident that TI have now won the calculator war against HP. In the 80's, HP were clearly winning at the top end with the 41C and 48SX. What happened?
Here are a few suggestions:
1) HP were winning at the top end, but paid insufficient attention to the bottom end. TI got the cheap school market, and once graphing calculators became a cheap commodity, the top end evaporated, and TI held the bottom.
2) RPN was loved by many geeks, but presented too much of an entry barrier to neophytes. HP tried to counter this by using algebraic notation on their low-end (starting around 1990). Was it too little too late? Did the lack of unity through the range hurt them?
3) Fiorina dropped the ball. She killed a vibrant part of the company because it didn't fit her printer-and-PC-empire vision of the company.
(I've been a long-time partisan of HP calculators, and have a collection of about 20 of them.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
hp 33s scientific calculator with RPN, bitches.
Hi all, thanks for the comments. I'll make a few myself:
:)
* First: Thanks Google. usb8x is a Summer of Code project. Google's support meant I didn't have to find a real job.
* A greyscale movie would definitely have been better than a B&W one. But the point of Michael's demo was proof of concept for a mass-storage device driver. That's pretty darn impressive as it is, in Z80 assembly with no OS support. I'm sure someone will come along and write a pretty version soon.
* Some more details about the hardware platform: The TI84 Plus has a 15 MHZ Z80 CPU and a 96X64 monochrome display. You can fake greyscale pretty well by swaping planes. It has a 2-bit serial port, and a full-speed On-The-Go USB port. Unfortunately the OS doesn't provide any support for USB device drivers.
* OK, so I'll admit: this was mainly done for the "it's cool" factor. But there are useful applications. As silly as it may sound to you, students these days do plug in keyboards to their calculators to take notes on. Or at least TI would certainly like them to, and now they don't have to buy the ridiculously expensive TI branded keyboard to do so. And TI calculators are actually quite useful if you're in the field collecting data with a Vernier probe. Now you can carry along a USB thumb drive and not worry about running out of space for your data.
* Besides, it's cool
-Dan Englender
Move over Sega CD, Helllo Ti-84+.. Sweet pixelated goodness
Seriously I never wanted to the see the day when Slashdot would be home to WMV files. An Open Source sponsored website is posting propietary file formats that play like crap on Linux and Macs. I for one will not support this.
The calculator has the matrix, Neo
Who cares? It's playing at ~1/3 full framerate and is barely recognizable.
This was almost interesting, but then I noticed that there was a strange pattern in the wood in my desk and I got distracted.
What were we talking about again?
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
My first *real* digital calc used a nixie type 7segment display..
Nice cool orange color.
The 2nd was green, some other sort of gas type display..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Am I the only one who had the sudden urge to tilt my monitor to read 710.77345? Ahh, the crick in my neck!
...seriously, if you're worried about playing movies on your calculator, you have more problems than /. can help with. Sure it's a neat trick, but it's not practical.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
Your link is broken. Got a better one?
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
I was thinking the same thing - thanks for the chuckle my friend :-)
And the number of people found jacking off watching their calculators dramatically increases...
Hmm, no longer just an MIT phenomenon, eh?
http://www.mathworks.com/products/symbolic/
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
That Matrix movie is just a bunch of green and black pixels anyway!
vk.
I'd ask if it'd run OSX86, but there's way too many buttons.
I hear there is a rumour Apple are thinking of releasing their own calculator to help spur iBook sales in schools.
The iCalc has the same number of buttons as a TI-84, but as consession to asthetics, they arn't marked but are instead all a single unified service in a 'brushed metal' finish. Thankfully, contrary to some initial concerns that were expressed, this turns out not much of a problem because it's been intentionally optimised to perform and output the result of a single operation operation (6 x 7), additional operations having been removed so as to avoid confusing novice users.[1]
[1] Though further rumours abound this is in no small part due to the sourcing of Intel for the core chip design and that unresolvable heat disspation problems cropped up when attempting more complex operations. In fact, internal testers have reported that after extended usage, they have noted rounding errors in the units they have received (resulting in the system displaying a result for the calculation of 41.999 (recurring)).
On the topic of calculators,i can say that the HP 33s is a major pain in the arse. The decimal is so small you can hardly see it,the keys are good but need some major force to push,and using RPN is too tediousome for certain Pre college students.One thing good bout the calculator would be its massive memory for equations and programming and the rubber grip by the side of the calculator
To tell you the truth,the major calculator used in South East Asia would be the Casio FX-570MS.Cheap(only USD10), fast and bloody durable.This is the cheap all in one in Malaysia.ANother thing,it can do Vector,Matrix,Intergration and Diffrentiation all for the cheap price of USD10.if i am not mistaken,it is banned for some examinations in several countries due to its capabilities.
...really, this had little to do with that. Maybe it just does not need its own category.
Um...if thats the most "fun" phrase you could come up with, I'm just going to take a stab and guess that you weren't invited to a lot of parties...
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
So in essence, they've turned the latest TI calculator into a palm pilot?
What's wrong with making a program for palm pilots that make them into TI calculators?
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Pixelvision lives!
http://www.comics.com/comics/jumpstart/archive/ima ges/jumpstart2005082130811.jpg
How does somthing as blatently plagerized as that make it into every Sunday Newspaper in the US, but yet downloading the same movie that its stolen from gets you tossed into jail?
I tilted my head, and I didn't get it.. Shell oil? I must be real young :P
I don't quite see the point beyond the proverbial "because we can" axiom.
I'd put this in the Minix on a toster category.
(It's still a pretty cool geek trick though)
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Mod Parent Up -- One of the authors of the program posted it.
1) TI *owns* the school market and has for quite some time. I don't see that changing any time soon. HP tried, but they don't have the marketing forces to make it happen. Come to think of it, HP marketing has been weak or nonexistent for a long time. I don't care if it is, as long as they make the best darn calculators in the world. But they're slipping on this last point; thankfully they know it. Hopefully are doing something about it, 'cause if they don't do something about the crappy keyboards on recent models like the 49G and 49g+ it's all over for them. And WTF were they thinking with the V shaped keyboard and nearly invisible decimal point on the 33S, not to mention the terrible color scheme?
2) Loved by geeks, yes. Too much of an entry barrier to neophytes? No way. Look at the astonishing number of 12Cs sold since that machine came out in 1981, and people love them. I don't buy the "too tough to learn" whine. I say DUMP ALGEBRAIC and LONG LIVE RPN.
3) Carly was one of the biggest jokes that ever happened to HP. Huge mistake on their part, and an even bigger mistake of them to alienate Walter Hewlett and force him to resign when he strongly objected to the Compaq merger (Carly's folly, I'd say). It will take a long time for them to recover from that fiasco, if ever. HP employees shouted with joy when Carly got fired - the witch was dead at last.
I'm working on a robotics project, and have a serial (RS232C) interface to my bot's AVR Mega uController. I was looking for a serial terminal that I could interface to it, when it occurred to me that TI calculators use serial interfaces. Does anyone know of a serial term that would turn a TI calculator into a dumb term?
I've heard of FTerm running on Fargo on a TI-85, but can not find a download site.
Thanks!
Andy Out!
I bought a keyboard for my TI-83 Sliver Edition calc while in high school. I attempted to use it for taking notes in class, making flash cards on the calc, and programming. However, whenever I took it out in class to take notes, the teacher always told me I was not allowed to use it. I was sent to detention by my history teacher, when I was just typing in notes from his lectures. Its useful to have, but the teachers hate anything they don't understand, and you get punished for trying to learn. I'm glad I'm in college, at least sort of ;)
slightly offtopic, but you can view a matrix scene in your browser. in ascii art. klicky
See pictures of tits
The only thing I can think of is that a PDA is a bit more expensive. But then comparing the higher end calculators with the lower end PDAs, that doesn't seem true.
A PDA is bound to be more flexible, and have a sheadload more software, and benefits from the economies of scale - there must be many more PDAs sold than fancy calculators.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
I'd bet you substantial amounts of money that any school or other educational establishment worth the ground it stands on will have that policy.
Oh sure, I once used my Palm III with a graphing calculator app in an exam... because my 'real' calculator had failed, and I decided that without a calculator, I'd be so fucked that it was worth the gamble. No one noticed.
My calculator says "BOOBS" when you turn it upside down. How cool is that?
In the early 1970s when the oil shortage was a big deal and people still thought big-ass calculators with red numbers were pretty nifty, this joke made the rounds:
"142 Israeli soldiers fought 15,469 Arab soldiers for 5 years for oil rights. Who won?"
On the calculator type in 142 X 15469. When you enter the "=" key the result is 710.77345. Now turn the calculator upside down for the answer!
Yeah, it's pretty lame, but remember that people still thought calculators were pretty freakin' cool. Whoa. Words on a calculator.
Is it possible to have that video in something else than a proprietary crappy format from M$ ?
VLC doesn't play that here. And I'm quite sure that Ti84 doesn't either.
I much prefer 5318008, myself.
As do I, but the point was usually to use up the whole 8-digit display. Of course, for 10-digit displays, 5800877351 was popular.
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1