Post your ideas for new miscellaneous programs here, or build on ideas posted by other visitors.

If anyone's like me,they stumble across quite a few ebooks they might want to read and don't want to spend a ton of cash on a pda wich aren't allowed(at least on my campus,wich is a college and highschool for both students) until afterhours. A while back,i had the novel idea of reading ebooks on a ti-83+ calc form plain text files. Since i can only progam in basic, i tryed wirting a small program that would translate text files into "PRINT <Lines>" formats in basic wich then could be opened on a ti-83+ calc and scrolled through. However,i was never able to finish the idea and now don't have the time,so if anyone wants to make a graphical interface reader and some software to convert text to that form,or is there one allready?

On detached solutions there is a simple program called 'nifty' that reads in BASIC programs as if they were plain text files, you could use that program to view your ebooks.

Could we reverse engineer .PDF, the MS Ebook format, etc. and convert the to Nifty, Notefolio, Basic Program, etc.?

illegal++

It may not be necessary to do that. OpenOffice is open-source and it opens most of the documents that you mentioned, so it may be possible to get the encoding from the sorce for OpenOffice.

Does anyone know of a program to get a TI-83+ SE rom onto a PC using the silver-usb link? All the programs like romdump don't seem to work with it!
Thanks,
Avram E.

Yes. . .
I Have The Same Problem
Viritual Ti Doesn't Have A USB Port As An Option So If Some One Can Make It Or Find Sometin To Do Tell Us

As far as I know noone has made a SE emulator or dump program. I doubt that it would be very hard to make a dump program, but what good would it be without an emulator?

<Vx>

Check the "(Web page)" for an emulator. It's not completed, but it is still an emulator...

I had the same problem with my serial graphlink and '86.

Your best bet is to download the newest SDK from http://education.ti.com
You might have to get an account if you dont already have one. Also this address might work
http://epsstore.ti.com/ webs/catlist.asp?deptid=157&catid=584
(omit the space between '/' and 'webs' in the address above, i had to do that because it was too long)
anyway there should be a flash debugger on it that will allow you to mimic the 83+SE and run anything on it I haven't downloaded it yet but when I bought my SE The disk it came with had it on there so just try that

TIMM (video convertor for all TI calcs) is incredibly annoying because the videos have to fit in RAM and often are over 24k. Why doesn't someone write an App video conversion program, to make videos as apps rather than ASM programs, so that we could have videos up to 160k?

ASM & BASIC programs can't generate appvars or apps

ASM programs can create appVars.

Not ASM programs. Apps.

regular ASM prgms CAN make AppVars (it just more common to have an app make appvars, as the name imples)
if ouy have ever played Sn00d(it's like the puzzle game "bust-a-move"[where you shoot the colored bubbles])
Sn00d makes/uses an Appvar to store its high scores

Would it be possible to create an ASM program to store normal TIOS variables as AppVars, then (to increase the number of accessible variables).

I've had the idea of a program (ported to all calcs) to allow them to transmit data. One good thing that could be done with this is sending TI-BASIC programs from, say, an 86 to an 89, translating it, then making it run on the 89. Programmers could also incorporate the code into games, making them multiplayer with any other calc.

I would love to make this work BUT I don't know anything about the non-89 link specifications or protocals. If anyone knows anything about these, or has already made something similar, please post!

<Vx>

You can find link specs for just about all TI calcs in the Text:Hardware (I think) section.

"Text:Hardware section?" I know there's nothing like what I need in the Hardware section, if that's what you were referring to. The main thing I need to know is the bits per second rate for each calc link port and if they could be changed. Knowing this will allow me to synchronize data, so you wouldn't lose any data.

<Vx>

Yeah-I there's a document that I got from there that describes the calc-to-calc and silent link protocols for the TI-86 (might have the bitrate). If you're coming up with your own protocol, then the '86's link port can go at any speed up to 9.6Kbps, I think. If you still want that protocol description, it's the file ti86prot.txt in link86all.zip.

VERY VERY sorry! I meant Text/Calculator Technical Info/ !!!!

Okay, I think I found the stuff you were talking about. There was actually quite a bit on the subject that I didn't know about in the text archives. Anyway, I've experimented a little and have managed to get TI89->TI86 working (very early, but still quite promising) and remote control of the TI89 (from another TI89, though).

I tested the stuff on VTI, then with a friend's calc, and they both worked the same, so I'm just going to use VTI for now; I really don't have access to anything but my TI89 for extended periods of time.

I'll keep you updated as things occur.

<Vx>

Good! Sounds interesting!

Is 86-83+ any easier b/c of the Z80 being the proc on both?

idk for sure but it probably makes things much less complicated

I thought that the Z80s and 68ks were clocked at different speeds, so transmission wasn't possible between formats (the result of an oscilloscope test of an 83+ and a V200). There would have to be a different OS than the TIOS on both so that one would send every other bit (12MHZ vs. 6MHZ) and the other would receive every other bit-i.e. to send 11111111, the 68k would send 1010101010101010 (minus the SOH etc).

You need to keep this in mind: just because the cpu frequencies are 6Mhz and 12Mhz doesn't mean that the link clock runs at either of those. In fact I hope it doesn't, seeing as the Gameboy Advance (another thing I program for) has a max game link speed of 115.2kbps, and a speed like that is buggy on it!

Honestly, I don't know how fast either of them transmit, but it must be close to the same because I've been able to trasmit data w/o changing the baud.

But then all data from the link port would have to be uploaded into another memory chip that would then stream the data across-if it didn't, there would be a jam somewhere-whether the proc is generating data too fast to send or the link is sending data too fast for the proc to send more data to it.

Also, there were tests using an oscilloscope that determined that the link clock speed of the V200 is 2x the link clock speed of the 83+. That would mean something like 6MHZ & 12MHZ.

The link ports in the TI-8x calcs are self-clocking, so to speak.

The link port has three signals: ground plus two others. The two others correspond to 0 and 1 during transmission. They also are used for timing. The sending calculator raises one signal (for 0 or 1) and waits for the receiving calc to raise the opposite signal. Then the receiving calc waits until the sending calc lowers its signal, then it lowers its own. Finally the sending calc starts over again. That's my understanding of how it works, at least.

The TI-9x link port actually has two modes: hardware-based and software-based.

The hardware-based mode sends and receives whole bytes (possibly the same way as on the TI-8x) and sends interrupts for an interrupt handler on the CPU to handle the data. The handler either reads a byte and tells the port it's ready for more, or it sends another byte, depending on if it's sending or receiving.

In software mode, a program can change the signals on the link port directly, just like on the TI-8x calcs. This mode can be used to make sound, for example.

You can read the text files in Preos in TI-89 Assembly Shells to learn the lowlevel stuff about the calcs.