That's exactly what I was thinking... If he is coming back, then why did he quit.

QwikTym Should be a great prog... I might buy an 86 for this prog.

YAY!!! Now we may finally have a program that will play porno movies on your calulator!!! Maybe sound :)
I believe that it should be designed for the 89 as well because of the memory and processor speed...maybe something to think about.
-Chris-

making it for the ti-89 might be tough for him. it all depends on if he knows 68k or whatever the hell its programmed in. because 86 is completely different i was told.

Hey cool. Way to go Kirk, looking forward to it...

NOTE: I have reconsidered some things and have decided that it is silly to simply "give up" programming for TI calcultors. Do realize, however, progress will be slow. Previously I tried to get a project done just as soon as I could; now it sort of depends on ambition. :)

Hey, no prob. I don't think anyone minds the amount of time you take. I have a question, though. I downloaded a file, jordan.zip i think it was, under the 86 ASM archives. It shows a 10 or so second, looped, 8 level greyscale video of Michael Jordan scoring a basket. It took up something like 60k if I remember right. But you say it could be possible to run a 4 minute 4 level greyscale program. And also that this program will emphasis decompression of the video. Unless 4 level greyscale is much, much, much, much smaller than 8 level, or the file is as tightly packed as a sardine can which I doubt could be decompressed quickly on a Z80, I don't see how that is possible. Please explain further.
Thanks

David

Most of the movies I have seen on the 86 are a bunch of PICs that are displayed in succesion of each other making it look animated. The reason they are only like 6 seconds is the they have like 15 1024 byte files so you run out of space fast. My only guess for how he'll do this it'll probably be like changing just certain parts of the screen to move something not redrawing the whole entire screen. But Kirk tell us how you did it I'm curious too.

To my knowledge, only BASIC movies ar like that. (I could be wrong). I thought in ASM movies, like the jordan one, that there was an individual ASM command for each pixel for the refresh rate (greyscale) and for location. Which means lots of commands and space. (i don't program in ASM, so I am taking educated guesses on that.)What I do know, however, is that these ASM movies get some 5 frames a second, which means some 20 to 30 frames an a bunch of memory. Thats what I am really wonderin about. How do you compress that?

AS you said, you are wrong. In assembly, we use bitmaps for our static pictures, just like the BASIC ones. But, we can do transition compression, which is a relatively new idea for the calcs, but not for computers. There is a transition compression animation program and routine set out for the ti-85 made by eric huizing and josh morris. The 85 doesnt have as much room as the 86 does to work with, but in b/w, ive seen a full screen movie on the calc that had a running time of almost 40 seconds or more
it was only 19k(including routines and OS). add 4level grayscale to that, itwould be about 38K. 8level would be about 57k. so, on the 86 with 96k of working space, you could have a movie running almost 2 minutes at 4lvlgrayscale. about 1 minute 20 seconds of 8lvl grayscale.
remember, these numbers would be if they usd the same ideas and methods as the 85 version does. with the grayscale, even more compression wuld be possible so the numbers could go even higher. with a better transitory compression algorithm, you could easily get the lengths advertised.

Oh well, I tried. I told you, i'm not an ASM programmer. (however, i would like to be one sooner or later.)

Nice to see you again onthe ASM scene Kirk!...

Out of curiousity, if you don't want people to anticipate anything on account of the uncertainty of your ambition why are you publicizing this before it's complete?

Welcome back, nonetheless :-)

NO! This is a stupid program! You can watch movies with no sound on your calc! Stupid, stupid, stupid .... movies on a TI 86 with no sound.

No, you're stupid!! Try having an open mind?

If you don't like it, then don't use it.

I realize that this may be a totally foreign concept to a closed mind, but people sometimes just like to make a program just to prove to themselves that they can do it.

Hey, this is gonna be a wierd message board posting session without the multitude of people saying:

"y0 d00d, p0rt |t to the TI-86!"

Frankly, i won't miss it.. :)

y0 d00d, p0rt |t to the TI-85

Sorry, but you were asking for it, anywho, In response to an above message, no, it doesn't matter if it has sound or not. Us lowly TI-85 programmers still get to look up in awe at the amazing TI-86 and say, "Looketh! They hath thrice the memory hath we! And the playeth movies! We must bow!" So, don't cry about how you don't get your precious sounds. The calc wasn't built for that anyhow. Welcome back, Kirk.

-Patrick "Sky" Gray
Look for "Monarchy" by Skysoft Design sometime in January.

Sure, This Looks Cool!!! But I do agree: No Sound? Thats kind of a disappointment. Oh well, you're right the processor must be too overloaded for that feature. Although, is there any possibility for this program With sound on the 89 and 92? I dont have those calcs, but I was just thinking that'd be a great acheivement for them, and it should be very possible with their 10 MHz processors... =P

Processor speed doesn't have everything to do with not having sound. On the z80 calcs, the interrupt speed isn't fast enough to allow interrupt based sound. For a full explanation, see the sound section at 86 Central (URL above).

The interrupt speed is somewhere around 200 Hz (times per second). The link port must be turned on, then turned off using the sound routine. So if it were alternated every single interrupt, then the highest pitched sound would be 100 Hz. This is way too low for anything useful.

The only alternative is to integrate the sound playing routines with the video routines. This would greatly slow down the video routines, which are already strained due to compression and the sheer amount of data to be moved. Sound (if was to be anything more than a few beeps like in Mario) would have to be changed in the middle of updating a frame, which would be virtually impossible to do.

I would like to ask everyone why it takes so long for this calculator site to update their news and their archives?

It takes so long b/c it takes so long for people to come out with new programs... There are enough okay programs out there... The okay programs have run out, all we have left are the great programs which are yet to be discovered and written... So as new ideas for programs are realized, they will be constructed and there will be a great program boom once again...
Write me.

well have you looked at their upload list lately? they have probably at least 35 programs just sitting there. so why are they just sitting there?

Where's the upload list????
Chris

They are just sitting there because Bryan hasn't put them in the archives and linked to them on the main page. He does it by hand, but I think he should write a script to do it for him. I mean he's got the knowledge so why not?

We can't just shovel all new programs directly into our archives. Each one has to be looked at, tested, classified, archived, folded, unfolded, swallowed, regurgitated, tested again, and finally submitted in triplicate for approval by a council of experts who make the ultimate call.

But seriously, if we could trust people to upload only genuine programs that weren't duplicates, fakes, warez, or other undesirables, they'd go right into the archives off the bat. That's not the case, though, so we have to examine each one by hand.

Hrm, for some reason i don't believe you test every program.. for example, the program made by turbosoft called FlashROM.. it's supposed to render your calculator useless. Would you mind telling us what happened when you tested this program? Thanks

Chances are those pieces of crap are fake. But why would you want one of those?

--The old-fashioned way to render a calculator useless is to take a battery out.--

Final exams.