Re: TI-H: TI92 and modem


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Re: TI-H: TI92 and modem




Look guys, what's the point of making all this stuff?  With current
technology, the smallest you could get is an add-on the size of a shoe-box,
with a cord hanging out.  Sure, it'd be "neat" to have a web browser on a
calc, but it wouldn't be able to support color, extensive graphics (which
nearly everything is nowadays).  Yes, Richard, hyperlinks do work in
terminal programs.  How do you think you get around?  I'd be up for a
text-based browser, but how web sites do you know that are entirely
text-based?  We'd need a whole new network.  The safest bet would be to ask
ticalc.org to put up some extra pages, just for this network.  The biggest
problem I can see though, is getting dial-up access.  I'm sure no one here
wants to hook their calc up to a computer just use a text-based web browser.
If you did that, why not just use Netscape on your computer?  So in order to
have the calc completely independent, you'd need a dial-up system.  The
easiest way to do this would be to write a clone of Winsock on the calc.
Port it to every system, and have a Dial-up Netwrking program like Win95.
If Winsock is emulated correctly, it'll be able to interface with external
computers just like your computer does.  Then you could dial up your
favorite internet service, and the ISP won't know the difference, except
perhaps for slower access times.  Once you have Winsock connected (in TSR
interrupt mode), you could run an external program compatible with Winsock
to do whatever you need to do.  You could run an FTP program, a text-based
web browser, a pop3 e-mail program, even IRC!  I guess a web browser would
be able to support small (100 pixels wide) b&w images, but that's still not
much.  Like I said earlier, we'd need a whole new web server designed to be
compatible with this system.  If anybody is game, you could try to write a
stand-alone web browser, instead of one on the calc, or maybe an external
one.  The only big downside to this project is screen capacity, but if it
were external, that could be solved.  Planar makes an active matrix
electro-luminexcent (AMEL) display about the size of your index finger.  The
resolution is 640x480x512.  Not half bad, actually.  But since it's so
small, it requires optics which Planar will gladly help you out with (at a
little extra cost, of course!).  I'm contacting a guy from Planar about it
right now, but he's not responding very quickly.  I haven't figured out how
much one display costs, but since they're designed for interface with
computers, one package comes  with all the stuff necessary to hook it up to
your computer.  They have an AMEL development kit too, that $3000 for the
monochrome, and $3500 for the color.  That's the big problem, y'see.  Well,
if anyone is interested, talk to Planar.

-Gul


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