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) ."

Comments

Just Because You Can

[PepeGSay]

Some things clearly must be done... just because you can.

Re:I must be old.

[superyanthrax]

They still do. It's just that they have much more features now and that the original purpose of a graphing calculator has been obscured. Now for most they are either cheating implements or a glorified Gameboy. Honestly, for mathematical applications I'd rather use Mathematica, because I'd rather have my 2.66 GHz P4 crunch numbers rather than a Motorola 68000 10 MHz processor (this is the processor on a TI-89).

Dithering

[Detritus]

The dithering looks like crap. My old HP-49G supports grayscale, what about TI calculators?

Re:What a pity

[Doppler00]

Okay, the REASON it is probably taking 20 minutes is because you are probably asking the calculator to invert a matrix _symbolically_ which by all means will take almost forever. I just executed randMat(7,7)^-1 and it took no more than 5 seconds. Make sure the calculator is in approximate mode (or diamond Enter) if you're just interested in floating point numbers. What type of matrix are you trying to invert anyway that it takes even 2 minutes on a hand held calculator? If you're doing that you're wasting your time (and calculator batteries) and you should be using an appropriate math package on a PC.

I like the TI-89 because it's easy to use and supports symbolic math. But to be honest with you, Texas Instruments has done absolutely NOTHING to upgrade the hardware to something modern. Oh yes, they think people will just keep buying their 1995 dated technology.

Come on! We have Gameboy's with color screens with more horespower than any of these calculators! It's pathetic that there are no new calculators of any significance being released now.

Symbolic Toolbox

[Ayanami Rei]

http://www.mathworks.com/products/symbolic/

Re:I must be old.

[BrokenHalo]

I am old.

Which might be why I always tend to be saddened by the disproportionate amount of activity in the games section of ticalc.org by comparison with the more useful projects.

Re:What a pity

[peawee03]

TI is pushed *hard* in schools. You get an HP, and when going to try to explain something to a teacher, they'll look at you like you've grown a 2nd head when you start punching in RPN. Especially the younger generation of teachers coming up that were raised on TI.

Also, have you looked at a modern high school math textbook? The ones I used were designed to be used with a TI grapher. Down to not discussing what you were doing, but just giving button pressing sequences.

I use Mathmatica myself nowadays, but in high school, I needed the TI because that's what the classwork wanted.