As much as I would like for Ti's to become "low end computers", I still know that they will never be. As was said before on this page, this marketing strategy goes completely against the image of texas instruments. No parent wants to purchase their child a system in which the child will squander his education with video games. The whole reason I started with Ti Calculators is because of their innocence. A teacher won't know whether you are working that problem or trying to beat your friends high score at Ztetris. If you want better, buy a gameboy... but im sure the teacher won't allow you to play it while she explains mathematics.
Im all for the idea of fully exploiting a Ti calculator though. Finally we have the system available that ive been looking for. The Ti-89, with the inconspicous look of an 8x, but with the power of the 92+(albeit geometry, which i dont find useful) So, as was said earlier I think its a fantastic challenge for us programmers to develop this machine (not just in gaming) but with brilliant applications.
Thanks

*sigh* Give up the gaming. I hardly talked about it. Any parent, I believe, would love to purchase a $100 (or $200) general computer.

I beleive that the idea of Mr. S.T.L.'s article was to move the TI away from the Calc market altogether. He wasn't saying make low end computers for the classroom, because no teacher would allow it. He was saying GENERAL PURPOSE, as in to replace PDA's etc. I think what Ti's do very well now is prove the power of long-past Z80 and 68k processors when good programmers are present. Lets face it - Games aren't office apps but they suck power like the mothers they are. A real computer could be made from, say, a 20 MHz 68030. Now maybe that could be taken seriously.

Oi! You are getting weird! did it ever occur to you that the heatsinks and fans alone for a 20mhz processer wouldn't fit inside or the calculator case? or that the expander, speakers, calc/calc, and calc/PC all use ONE port? who would write the software for the Expander, when it needs a different COM port. TI? I don't think so. They don't know how. besides, as with what happened with PCs, would so with calculators. You seem to think you could fit lots of apps/games into 3 megs. Did it ever occurto you that with more space, people would write bigger programs? or that if Texas Instuments ever did make this, that they might sell it as a PDA, and not a calculator, thus making you buy the software too?

Isn't Ti working with 3rd party companies to make software for the 89? You would have to pay for that. It starts already...

"Getting weird?" Hah, I've just started. :-D I see that this article was pretty popular, 20 comments (not counting mine) in such a short time. I'm thinking of writing another. :-P
Anyways, the TI-92 has a 10Mhz processor, and no fans. A 20Mhz processor could be made small, yet not torch the calc's case. Lots of *sigh* programs (I will NOT say the g-word again, everyone seems to think only about the g-word), can fit in 3MB. *Without* (say) the bloat of MS Office. And PDAs will never become cheap computers. They are too limited in their basic concept.

I hope the purpose of you writing articles isn't to get popular or to see if the article gets popular or not.

Actually, no. Popularity online, if there is such a thing, doesn't matter to me. I have an entirely fake persona online, and I couldn't care how popular Robert Smith, STL137 is. *chuckle* Heck, I don't care about popularity in the "real world". But it DOES feel good to know people read what I rant about. Sort of like when the little counter on my... aw, nuts, I don't want to violate their guidelines. But when I wrote my.... *ahem*... I didn't want the counter to shoot to a million. I just wanted to rant, and perhaps be informative while doing it. The counter was a bonus, for me. :-D (And the link isn't mine, it's to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.)

Noticed something. Before I mentioned that the ARTICLE was popular. I don't care about me.

There are NO heatsinks or fans on any processors under 33 mhz. Even my old 66 didn't have a heatsink or a fan.

Bah Hooie!! My old old 286 6mhz has a small board of heatsinks built in under the female chip socket! and are you telling me your 66mhz computer doesn't have a fan? what do you think make the whirring noise? not your hard drives...

I built my 66 so I know what I put into the computer. NO heatsink OR fan! And a 66mhz intel processor. NO heat related problems.

So shove it :P

You forget that the 286 was manufactured on a 4 or 5 micron while the 486 66MHz was at 1 micron. Obviously the smaller chip runs cooler. My 33 does not have a heatsink. But you should see the heatsink a PIIs. They are the twice the size of 92s.

That is not true. A 4 or 5 micron chip will run cooler because there are less transitors in a certain amount of space, where has in a 1 micron chip there would be 4 or 5x the transitors. More transitors=more heat. This is why the PII have such an outlandishy large heatsink. They are made in a .35 micron CMOS with 8 million transitors. And a 6x86 is made in a .6 micron CMOS. Simple physics, more objects in a smaller are generate a greater volume of heat in the area.

It seems to me that smaller objects means less friction between transistors. Also, a 1 micron transistor is going to take less power to function than a 4 or 5 micron. And the Dechutes core (The actuall processing unit) of the PII runs on extremely low power - about the same as my old 486 33MHz. The heatsink is for the electronics needed to access the onboard L2 cache - Memory is the power hog and heat creator here.

If memory is the real heat creator then explain to me why a 128 meg 168 DIMM dosen't need a fan or heat sink. Or why a 1 meg COAST(cache on a stick) dosen't have a heat sink or fan. One mistake in previous is the 6x86 cyrix uses a .35 micron CMOS, I was think about the PPro .6 microm BICMOS. The heat sinks the 286 guy is talking about are for the voltage regulators, The processors where 5v single voltage chips. The power reg's get really hot(I have the scar to prove it[don't ask]). Power has nothing to do with heat, heat is created with RESISTENCE(the magic word). Run a 6 volt current through a 10 gauge peice of wire, then feel the wire(not even near hot). The run the same current through a 36 gauge peice of wire, look at the wire sometimes it glows and melts, others it just gets really hot. This is how electric heaters work RESISTANCE. The smaller the electric pathway the more resitance, more resistence = more heat. So the smaller the transitor and the more transitors there are the more heat generated.

John
IBM

Geeez this post will be skinny.
Anyways, memory generates little heat. It's mostly capacitors. Processors generate heat like mad. The newer the processor, the more heat. (By the way, there is no friction involved.) It's because more transistors are packed into nearly the same area. I predict that if a fan for an Intel Merced ever fails, then POOF, there goes your computer, in a bright flaming bonfire.

Don't be so skeptical! Look what technology has done with computers since they first came out decades ago! How do you know that TI will never make low-end computers? You never know what kind of technology will be availablr in the near future. I'm sure many people agree with me.

Sorry but I'm going to have to diasagree with your opinion about PDA's. Palmpilot wannabe's are the future of computing. Imagine a Palmpilot running a Windows 95-like interface with an active-matrix color screen and a little antenna that pops out of the top and connects digitally to the internet. The Palmpilot already has tons of programmers programming games and everything including calculator software for it and some release their stuff for free. All you need is the hardware and and OS and the programmers can do the rest. You don't need to have a calculator with PDA functions, you just make the PDA into a calc with a program. On another note, I think TI calc's will eventually have color screens. Casio already tried a color calc (But it sucks). TI will say that color will make graphing easier. I bet when I have kids of my own in high school, they will show me their color games on TI calcs.

I agree. Ti should make 'little computers'. I know I would buy one. I think it would need a keyboard port and stuff like that, but one feature I think would be very useful would be internet access. This doesn't seem very likely, but I am currently writting a program for the Ti-85 in usgard which will inturpret HTML tags. I have also seen Telnet83 which connects an 83 to a telnet server. I think it would be very easy for ti to do and very cheap too. However, I agree that it would get them banned from tests, so they should probably make another series (instead of the ti calc series, the ti mini computer series) so then it couldn't ban all ti's. Another feature which would be essential for the success of these 'little computers' would be upgradability. It would need to allow the user upgrade the hardware. Such as put in a faster modem or add comunications ports and such.

Yo STL:
I think your article had plenty of great points, and I commend your ability to draw so much response from the TiCalc readers.
I would love to have a calculator that could be considered a PC. (Pocket Computer *hehe*)
I really don't like the idea of "chat rooms" unless TI (or some electronics zealot) implements the use of infrared technology, by which someone would have to get a calc that would act as a continuing server. Of course, someone could do that on an HP...
I also agree with your critics; the main market is schools. They disallow the TI-92 and TI-92+ because of the QWERTY keyboard, which classifies as a COMPUTER. If the TI Calcs are considered such, then they will likewise be banned.
But I think, all in all, you have a very intriguing article, and your ideas are valid. Good goin, dude.
XaVIëR

PS: If the calcs do get multiple ports, how about an AC adaptor? The way I program, I go through a set of AAA's every month. hehehe.
Then, let's try for a Xeon, and possibly a 24-bit TrueColour .28 dot pitch screen?

Yo Xavier,
I like your style. :-D That's one way to get me on my good side - compliments. Hehehe.
<<I think your article had plenty of great points>>
Yah!!
<<and I commend your ability to draw so much response from the TiCalc readers. >>
It's a virtue. Same thing happened with my article #2. Now, for #3... *grin*
<<I really don't like the idea of "chat rooms" unless TI (or some electronics zealot) implements the use of infrared technology, by which someone would have to get a calc that would act as a continuing server. Of course, someone could do that on an HP... >>
Neither do it, and the logistics are, *ahem* nasty. Of course, there was this REALLY nifty idea I had a while back: the 3-way link port. But very hard electrical-wise and driver-wise.
<<I also agree with your critics; the main market is schools. They disallow the TI-92 and TI-92+ because of the QWERTY keyboard, which classifies as a COMPUTER. If the TI Calcs are considered such, then they will likewise be banned. >>
Actually, the SATs and ACTs ban them. I suppose schools might too, but my school is cool with a TI-92. Of course, no one NEEDS a TI-92+ on the SAT. I myself, with a TI-85 with 1000 bytes of memory free (I was jammed with a fat periodic table that I didn't use), got a 1600 the end of my sophmore year. So a TI-92+ is overkill.
<<But I think, all in all, you have a very intriguing article, and your ideas are valid. Good goin, dude. >>
You're a good man, Xavier! :-D
Nifty.

PS: If the calcs do get multiple ports, how about an AC adaptor? The way I program, I go through a set of AAA's every month. hehehe.
Then, let's try for a Xeon, and possibly a 24-bit TrueColour .28 dot pitch screen?

>PS: If the calcs do get multiple ports, how >about an AC adaptor? The way I program, I go >through a set of AAA's every month.
Have you tried rechargable batteries?

Everybody is saying you would need infrared to connect calcs for a chat thing. bluetooth, anyone?