A good GUI would be a great thing. Most of the ideas thus far have been good. Many people are complaining because it's like windows. Why? The Win95 interface is fine. It is very productive and easy to use(although missing many features). The problem with windows is its to bloated. MS puts so much crap in there it takes a PII400 to run it!! Im a software tech at P&W so I know allot about Win95/NT. I could list 100million problems w/it if I wanted to. But of them maybe ten would be interface related. If this GUI ever comes out(which im doubting) it will really show MS. All the features and ease of use of windows in 10K! and on a machine that probably costs 10 bucks to make. BTW, TI really should make a better machine for us. The next consolz are going to use 300Mhz MIPS+DSP processors w/32 megs ram for $200-300. Imagine this: 66mhz MIPS processor, 66mhz DSP(digital signal proccesor, see below), 1 meg of DRAM(can anyone say 10 cents), and some kind of larger permant memory(not mechanical, maybe PCMCIA type thing). All this going through a moderate quality gray scale or color LCD. It can be done for<$200.

DSP->A procesor that alters incoming data(digital signal), used in heavily math oriented functions(matrix operations for 3d effects in PSX2). A programable DSP could be used for anything! 2D\3D games, trig functions, graphs, modem emulators.

With a machine like that we could do anything. Just don't let the GUI get bloated.

anybody have a list of parts and/or proceedures to complete the kind of machine "Big1" is talking about?

You said that current calcs cost about $10 to make.
You said that the supercalc you described would be <$200.
So multiply the current retail price by 20.
No one would buy it, no matter how sexy.

Beautiful thinking, but also remember how greedy people are.
leftorium

Did you say DRAM? DRAM is nothing but a grid with lots of transistors & capacitors in a matrix. The problem is though, DRAM drains quickly & must be re-suplied every few miliseconds. The 1st TI programmable calcs had DRAM and were erased every time you turned off the calc. Oh well w00t!

Here's my ideas

BATTERY LIFE

Any shell worth its code should be able to detect how much battery life is left. I'm not sure how to do this, but with a lot of intuition, it should be possible

Once that is known, it could be made to automatically increase contrast with battery drainage.

SYSTEM TRAY

A small system tray would also be useful. A battery icon could be shaded to show battery life left and a link icon could show when the link cable is attached.

I did a lot of research into a shell similar to the one you mention in this article. I had sketches, flowcharts, psudeocode, the whole nine yards. Before I got a chance to seriously start work on it, I moved out, started working full time and went back to college. Life's wierd like that. I would still be willing to help produce the shell with a team of at least three people. 2-co programmers, 1-graphics designer, and 1-debugger. I agree completely on the component idea (we programmers call that modular programming.) I think the more modular the shell is, the better off it will be. A simple Add/Remove section would be used to install and remove modules. Now we can have sound, screen savers, link programs or whatever (no matter how pointless) in our shell because we want to. The one other thing that is a necessity is relocation. This has been a big issue in the shell programming community for a long time. In order to have modular components, they must be able to exist anywhere in memory and the shell must be able to locate new modules when they are added. I am not a seasoned TI-ASM programmer. I have written a few programs, but nothing like this. In all honesty, I will need some help in writing the boot code for the OS and creating a compiler for the new functions, but if someone is willing to help me, I will give it a serious effort. If this shell is completed, it will be the last ENTIRE shell we need to write for the TI-85 for a long time because any new features can be added as components. Anyone that wants to help me (especially programmers) please e-mail me at:

noblej@yahoo.com

Thank you for you time.

You had alot of good ideas, as did most people who commented on this article. There's just one thing, Z80 based calcs are becoming obsolete. The 68K proccessor is much more powerfull. I think the perfect GUI should be aimed at the TI-89. The higher resolution and sharper image alone is reason enough, not to mention the 600K(w/firmware update) available memory. With the correct use of archive RAM, there would be plenty of room for all the modules and games you could want, especialy with compression. There are 2 features that would defenitly help. The abiltiy to store lesser used LIBS in archive, and a univeral highscore list stored in RAM for use by all programs, so scores will be saved even w/archieved games.

Plus, GRAYSCALE!

Creating the "ultimate GUI" sounds like a cool idea, but not one that one person could take on alone. What do you say that a bunch of us get together and work on it, kinda like what was done with Linux. Who knows, maybe we could even get into doing peripherals..pens, clocks, etc... If anyone's interested, E-Mail me, and we'll try to get a team together. We'll definitely need at least a couple good ASM programmers, some graphics designers... maybe eventually hardware people.... Anyway, e-mail me if interested.

Great idea! Im happy that someone spoke up. I would be happy to help make a group. A couple of people I know might be interested in joining.

Thanks for reading!

I am a TI-83+/PSE programmer. I have all the asm utilities for basic programs and could easily help. My current feat is to learn ASM. I am also trying to create a BASIC shell using my ASM utilities. I would call it midnight OS. BTW, the ultimate GUI should be like a macintosh just becuase it would just have more rendered graphics and would be less die hard uber geekish. (Note: I am a geek "he he") I am devoting my interest to this project. (I would be glad to help)

I have an idea! Lets start this thing! Everyone could do something. I can write BASIC, so thats a start. Everyone else can do ASM and we'll be on our way. Also, Consider looking at the 'USB Peripherals' article. If this OS/Shell ever made it to the TI-84, it would be important that you include support for such things.

I own an 83 and I'v written a TI-BASIC GUI for it that I call Windows 83. It's still in a fairly early stage and I haven't uploaded or distributed it, but I'm using how it works as an example of how I think a GUI would be better implemented. It doesn't bother with using a start menu or a menu bar or any of that, but instead just shows a screen full of icons, like the desktop of Windows 95/98 does with My Computer, the Recycling Bin and so on. One of the icons goes to the options menu to set things like passwords and pointer options, another goes to a screen that works almost exactly like the normal homescreen, except you don't have access to some of the menus, but allows almost all math operations you would need to be accomplished, and a third exits the program. All the other icons represent programs that you can run. The icons are each a 7x7 square that is designed by the user in a setup program (a process I'm soon going to improve upon), and then stored as a group in a pic file. Even though I will still probably add some features to it, it is still a fairly small program, about 2300 bytes, quite practical even for an 83. It also features a password protection option (can be turned off) that, although it uses only 8 keypresses and a fairly simple math sequence to store the password, is still pretty unbreakable without access to either the program itself (obviously, that will break almost any password) or NSA-like equpiment. Anyone who uses that on a calculator needs to find a better hobby, if you ask me. In any case, I've probably digressed a little, but my point is that I think we've got to differentiate between a "practical" GUI and one that's "cool." A lot of the feaures he is talking about are pretty "cool," but how many of them are worth wading through to just use your calculator, even though you'll only use them infrequently? I think that the idea GUI would allow easy, quick, and efficient access to all the programs on your calculator, and not have too many unneccessary bells and whistles that just get in the way for their "cool" value. My favorite example of this is the Explorer. TI programmed the standard interface for a reason. Why should we take up RAM just to duplicate it and make it look pretty? That's my two cents on GUI design.

Eric Tollefson

I'm sorry, but I disagree with you.

1st: The idea of this system is that you can delete all this "unneccessary bells and whistles with a high 'cool' value" if you want to (but I would absolutely keep them!).
2nd: I am 200% sure it is possible to create a cool, good looking AND practical GUI. In fact, it is my opinion that a good design in most cases makes a program more easy to use. Emphasis on GOOD design, but I must say these screenshots look good.

On the article: I LIKE IT! Three remarks:
-PLEASE make a version for Ti-83,
-It would be my advice to make icons 8*8 pixels, for compatibility's sake (with Aurora, Ti-Explorer for Ti-83, and so on),
-I fear that it is quite easy to entirely screw up the directory system, but I don't see a better way.

Okay, that's all. Lots of luck to anyone who tries to make this!

Beautiful idea - it really is, I really don't have much to say about it.

Oh, except that 10k is a lot on a calculator - even the 96k user memory TI-86...

But then again, if you could control what components you wanted that wouldn't really be a problem.

Very nice, now someone has to make it. I know I'd download it.

Heh, now I never quite understood what the point of a gui is if you're going to use the arrow keys anyways. Why not just have a plain shell with say a some extra features. Making a shell overly graphical makes it big and hard to use. Most of the ideas themselves are pretty good (especially the bit about uesrs being able to choose what parts of the shell they want), but having icons just cause they're pretty is kinda silly. In any case, just my thoughts,

-Dan

I know what you mean. I think the cool stuff should be behind the scenes, like emulation and libraries. I really don't see the point of icons, although a 7x7 icon would take up less memory than a program type description. The Explorer, I think is a bad idea. Why not use what's already built into your calc for deleting stuff. Did you ever wonder why there are no clocks on any of the calculators? It's because a calculator can't tell accurate time. This is because as the batteries lose power, the calc loses speed. Therefore, your clock would slow down as the batteries lost power. I do like the emulation and compression ideas though, even though they aren't exactly origional.

Has anyone thought about a external clock for the TI? it could be simmalar to the b.s. "year 2k" bios fixers i've been seeing at computer stores lately.

Has anyone thought about a external clock for the TI? it could be simmalar to the b.s. "year 2k" bios fixers i've been seeing at computer stores lately.

There are clock microchips using I^2C protocol by Siemens. Please check http://www.clinet.fi/~ozone/mbus/ for more information. But again, is a clock _really_ neccessary on a calculator? A RAM expander would be a better option, and it's really easy to make one. Drivers could be more difficult if Ozone hadn't done them already... And all 85 users, check the page! Ozone has made a really good multi-calc chat program!

Rather than a clock for a calender etc, get a timex datalink watch. it has all that crap- and best of all, it's programmable, so everyone knows you're a geek. 8P

I now what you mean. I used to have one of those. I loved it. They should make those watches water-proof.

The Ironman Data-Link is to 100M :)

Funny thing you mentioned that: I accidently jumped in a swimming pool with a similar watch... It never worked since...

Even waterproof watches are not very good in the water thats why I put mine in plastic wrap first. :)

Why would you want to be known as a geek?

Because geeks rock

The HP49 has a clock. What I want to know is, does it tell accurate time?

yup! w00t!