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Operating Systems Software GNU is Not Unix Handhelds Hardware

Free, Open Source OS For TI Calculators 284

Posted by timothy from the smallness dept.
nicklaszlo writes "TICalc.org announced yesterday that Patrick Pelisier has released a new beta OS, called PedroM, for the TI-89 and TI-92+ under the General Public License. Here is the source and binary. This is the first time a TI calculator has been free of proprietary software. The OS has 32 commands and backward compatibility for assembly programs. You can get a Windows/PC emulator of both calculators, for those who don't have either calculator, or don't want to risk their real system."
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Free, Open Source OS For TI Calculators More

Free, Open Source OS For TI Calculators

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  • Cool.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14, 2003 @04:55PM (#7719812)
    but can you still calculate stuff with it?

  • Nifty (Score:4, Insightful)

    by General Sherman ( 614373 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @04:56PM (#7719818) Journal
    I'll probably get modded down for this, but honestly, what's the point?

    Sure the OS on TI calculators is proprietary, but it does what it does quite well and I've never had issues with it.

    I think making OSS just for the sake of having OSS is stupid. Do something useful with your time. If you have such a great understanding, contribute packages to Linux or something.

    • Re:Nifty (Score:5, Insightful)

      by itsari ( 703841 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:02PM (#7719868) Homepage
      An open source alternative can help keep the heat on TI to make a better product. Also, in the future, this OSS can even become a better alternative than the TI software. It also gives an oportunity for developers to enhance the O/S they use when the please.

      • Re:Nifty (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LocoSpitz ( 175100 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:05PM (#7719891)
        The pressure won't be there until the OSS alternative actually is better than the TI software.

      • Re:Nifty (Score:5, Interesting)

        by windows ( 452268 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:47PM (#7720193)
        Yeah, it will, but there's already pressure on TI to improve their calculators. This came in the form of HP re-entering the graphing calculator market with several new calculators of their own including one which is far more powerful than any other calculator today [hp.com]. This isn't a concern for TI to make a better product, just because they don't charge for upgrades to the AMS (and aren't necessarily losing money if you switch away), because TI still produces the hardware, and because if you want the powerful math features of the TI-89 you still need to use the official AMS.

        • Re:Nifty (Score:3, Informative)

          by mrseigen ( 518390 )
          TI still owns the hell out of every school district I've seen. With hundreds of students students per school buying a new calculator every year, why in the hell would you ever want to waste money improving it?

          • Re:Nifty (Score:2, Insightful)

            by charlesparks ( 592959 )
            Sure, School Districts have been using TI for years. I've owned two TI calculators (86 and 83+) because it was what the school always recommended. The average joe high school student isn't going to buy the more expensive 89 or HP 49g+ because the 83+ is good enough for high school math.

            But when it comes to College and math in the field it is necessary to put encourage companies to progress to a better product. This is what this Open Source application has the potential to do and this is also what HP's
            • There are simply a LOT more High School students than college students, and you can usually use that same calculator the first year of college then you may need to upgrade. High school students can't justify upgrading, but college students can. The upgrade market is much smaller and more specialized and that's where HP has been more competitive. Now if someone would invent an OS for the HP's that got rid of that damn RPN that would be a worthwhile thing (it may exist, I don't want to go goggling right now).

            • Re:Nifty (Score:2, Interesting)

              by SuperMo0 ( 730560 )
              Another problem that I've seen in my school district is that ALL of the books now are "TI-83 enhanced" or some such thing like that, where many of the lessons involve learning how to do things specifically on the TI-83/+. It makes the calculators a staple around the school, but it would make conversion to a different calculator a bitch. It would probably be at least $1 million spent total, from all the students buying new calculators, the school system buying new class sets of calculators, and the school
              • The 83 is just about perfect for a high schooler -- the price is just about right, and it's the standard (Mead even makes a Five Star-series calculator case for them). That said, I could see HP shooting a little lower to get that market, though only if they offer some level of compatibility with the TI-83.

                If you notice, the 83 is so popular that TI doesn't quite support the 86 anymore -- the current USB Graphlink cable only supports the 86 on a Mac.
          • I think there is little point in using anything more advanced than, say, a TI 30x in maths class. TI-89's are nifty because they can plot functions and solve some integrals, but if you want to really understand maths you should learn to do this by hand.

            And yes, I used a TI-89 in school.

        • Re:Nifty (Score:5, Informative)

          by PhotoGuy ( 189467 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @08:03PM (#7720992) Homepage
          An odd thing about that HP-49G that you link to. It has enough features, that you actually have to *pay* for an *extra* manual if you want to get the documentation on all of it features.

          This calculator was expensive enough, I was very unhappy to learn that the manual that came with it didn't discuss all of its features, and that I had to pay extra to get all the documentation.

        • $150 for a calculator? I wish they would port something like Mathcad or Mathematica to Pocket PC. I'm sick of seeing these ugly low resolution screens on calculators with slow CPU's, limited memory, etc. It's time to move beyond 1990's technology for calculators.

      • Re:Nifty (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Wateshay ( 122749 ) <bill DOT nagel AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday December 14, 2003 @06:01PM (#7720299) Homepage Journal
        Why? What does TI care? They don't make a cent off of their software by itself. All of their money is made off of the hardware, and if there's OSS that's better than their offering, it just means they may sell more calculators.
        • That is exactly why it is good. They have no presure to make any software any better (to run on their hardware, that is) because they have no competition. So an alternative could even destroy the proprietary software and they could decide to go with the OSOS (Open Source Operating System). That would be jst great and would probably ensure that the software would get everything it can out of the hardware.

          Look at the Rockbox player [slashdot.org]. It would never had played videos if it wasn't for OSS.

          Regular PDA/cellphon

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:05PM (#7719897)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Nifty (Score:2, Interesting)

      by toasted_calamari ( 670180 )
      (disclaimer: I don't have a TI-89, and I haven't messed with the emulator)

      It looks like a cool interface, but I have a few questions

      1) the screenshot I saw made looked like some kind of pseudo unix shell. This is all fine and good with a normal computer, but with a graphing calc, where you have no QWERTY keyboard, a GUI is much faster. Is one available for this OS, or do we have do do everything pecking keys in alpha mode?

      2) having games on a graphing calculator is cool for when boredom strikes, but th

      • Re:Nifty (Score:2, Informative)

        by jx100 ( 453615 )
        the 89 may not have one, but the 92/92+/voyage 200 models all have plain, QWERTY keyboards.
      • by the looks of it (on the emulator), the TI92+ has a keyboard
      • The 89 doesn't have a qwerty keyboard, but someone wrote an interesting program for the 83: QWERTY [ticalc.org]. With the QWERTY Text Editor, you can flip your calculator on its side and type as if it were a normal computer keyboard. Perhaps the author of PedroM should adapt this functionality.

    • This could be how an ingenious person starts (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:16PM (#7719980)
      I am deeply disappointed in your attitude.

      As a 15-18 year-old, coding asm applications (this was before anyone had put together adequate C compilers for these calculator platforms) for my TI calculators was what introduced me to programming, gave me a creative outlet, and drove me to pursue and complete a CS degree.

      My high school didn't offer any CS or programming classes, and I didn't have any friends - much less any friends who would take the time from drinking and partying to learn to code z80 and m68k assembler. My interests in coding were how I defined and measured myself as a worthwhile human being, despite what anyone else thought about me.

      If someone like you would have come down all high and mighty and mocked my creative outlet, trivialized my many long hours working on what absolutely fascinated me, and told me I was wasting my time, I might not be where I am today. And judging by your tone, you could only dream of being in my shoes today.

      You know, I have a more interesting question:

      What have YOU done? What gives you the RIGHT to come in here and mock this young man's work?

      Get a life, really.

    • Re:Nifty (Score:5, Insightful)

      by theefer ( 467185 ) * on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:17PM (#7719990) Homepage
      What's the point of OSS ? Making better software ?
      No.

      Having a free OS can ensure that you have full access to the system, and that you know how to interface your program with it, or maybe improve it somehow.

      Even if it is (were, actually, since I have not tested it yet) not as featureful as the original proprietary OS, it does not mean it is completely inferior. Have you ever worked on a TI-92+ ? I have. It sucks.

      The pseudo-shell is really more pseudo than shell, the programming language is a joke, etc. Sure, it works. Sure, there are cool (proprietary) apps with it. But it does not mean it cannot be improved (possibly keeping the compatibility to still access those cool closed apps). Examples of improvements would be a better shell (the screenshots seem to show one), a more powerful filesystem (allow directories into directories, w00t), completion (available through a wrapper, but it's not that good), etc.

      There is room for improvement. So them'em play with the system and release it Freely, it can only get better !

      • Re:Nifty (Score:5, Insightful)

        by windows ( 452268 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:31PM (#7720100)
        With a lot of the new releases of the AMS (TI's operating system), TI has added new restrictions to what developers can do. For example, in AMS 2.03, assembly language programs are limited to 8k. In more recent versions, the limitation is 24k. There is no legitimate reason for this except trying to force developers to write Flash applications. This is significant because you have to pay TI to sign any applications you write if you expect them to run on any calculator. There are many other things that Flash applications can do that assembly language programs can't. These include support for language localization and adding commands to TI-BASIC. Another thing is assembly language programs cannot return values like ordinary functions can.

        While many of these restrictions have been fixed through nasty hacks found by developers, some of them cannot be easily fixed if at all.

        What's so bad about Flash applications? Because you have to pay TI to sign apps for the TI-89/TI-92+/V200. Most of us developers release our software for free. We don't have the money to pay TI to sign our software.

        As of now, these are the biggest advantages of the new OS, besides the fact that you have much more archive memory.

        Already, this new OS can make a game programmer's job a lot easier.
        • OK, I don't own a TI calculator (got a superslim Casio back in 85) and I don't ever plan on owning one, so forgive my ignorance, please.

          FLASH? Are we talking Macromedia Flash applications on a calculator? Or is this something else entirely different?
      • What's the point of OSS ? Making better software ? No.

        Slow down there. You don't speak for everyone who uses and develops open source software, and as such you can't make the blanket statement of the "point of OSS." I do both, and I most certainly do so because I believe open source makes for better software. In the cases where it doesn't -- for instance, in my opinion, Opera for web browsing -- then I'm perfectly happy to use a closed source alternative

    • Re:Nifty (Score:5, Informative)

      by windows ( 452268 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:24PM (#7720041)
      TI places a lot of restrictions on what assembly language programs can do. TI encourages programmers to make large software packages into Flash applications. Unfortunately, these applications must be digitally signed by TI. While a program to sign applications has been released as freeware for the TI-83+ calculators, no such signing program has been released for the TI-89/TI-92+/V200. A lot of developers simply don't have the money to buy signings from TI. It's $100 for three signings or $300 for ten signings. A lot of us developers release our software for free and don't want to spend this kind of money just to release our applications for free. Sure, we could charge for them, but most of us don't want to because we'd like free software to continue to dominate the TI community. Anyways, this sort of thing bypasses TI's restrictions on what assembly programs can do.

      • Re:Nifty (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Kymermosst ( 33885 )
        Anyways, this sort of thing bypasses TI's restrictions on what assembly programs can do.

        So does the TICT exepack system and program starters like Super Start, without losing the "calculator" part of the calculator.

    • Re:Nifty (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ari_j ( 90255 )
      How about a Lisp (well, subset thereof, of course) machine implemented on a calculator? A Lisp interpreter could feasibly be much faster and more powerful than TI-BASIC, without making basic calculations any harder than on a HP48. :)
      • My friend and I are planning to port a forth interperter to the TI89. Is this of use to anyone except us?

      • Re:Nifty (Score:3, Interesting)

        by __past__ ( 542467 )
        How about an emulator of the real Lisp machines TI built in better days, the TI Explorers?

        Oh wait, there is [unlambda.com], albeit in a suboptimal state.

        Now, would please somebody write a Free clean-room reimplementation of Symbolics Genera, so that the FLOSS community can catch up with the operating system state of the art of the 80ies?

    • Re:Nifty (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      One of the stupidiest remark I've read for a long time. Don't you understand the *HOBBY* part in the "Hobby OS" ?

      It's like telling a young kid or a beginner painter doing some drawing "You're stupid and lose your time. If you're not going to do something as good as Picasso, then quit and do something useful !".

      Idiot. If you're not interested by the news, just ignore it instead of pulling down someone having fun tinkering around.
    • When you only have 2 megs of memory to work with, cutting the size of the OS from ~800K to ~200K gives you a lot more room for gam^H^H^H^H other software.

    • Re:Nifty (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MoralHazard ( 447833 )
      Why the fuck do we always see all of the goddamned "This isn't useful to me," posts when brand-new, alpha-stage OSS projects open up? Dumbass--IF YOU CAN'T SEE A USE FOR THIS PROJECT YET, IT OBVIOUSLY ISN'T MEANT FOR YOU YET!!

      What the fuck would you have done with Apache 0.0.1? Or perhaps even a pre-1.0 version of Linux? Nothing, that's what--because you were not a developer on those projects. But there are many, MANY people who did see value in using those early releases, primitive as they were.

      Now,

      • Re:Nifty (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Kokeshi Harinezumi ( 713397 )
        This poster may be a slight bit intense, but I think he has a valid point.
        It's very much a fact that the majority of open source software begins as "useless", due to its inherent pre-release tendency.
        Therefore, it may be slightly premature to label it as "useless" in its relative infancy.

        Harinezumi

  • What does this really mean? (Score:5, Funny)

    by spin2cool ( 651536 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @04:57PM (#7719824)

    It means that math class will never be the same.

    We'll have progressed from playing single player tetris through Zshell to playing multiplayer doom over a WiFi nwetwork. (in the back of Algebra class, of course).

  • Now for the next port... (Score:4, Funny)

    by anothy ( 83176 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @04:58PM (#7719837) Homepage
    ...when can i expect it for my TI 99/4A?

  • Real use of calculator... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14, 2003 @04:59PM (#7719849)
    I think the true "caclulating" functions of the calculator have been lost to the geek crowd. I, for one, bought my 89 solely to do integrals for calculus. There is no way that I tricked my mom into buying it for me so I could play first person shooters, sweet greyscale games, run non-proprietary OS's, and make some awesome assembly progs. No way at all. Come on guys, really. Do some math...
    • In the same vein, if one really wants to make their 89/92+ useful, I recommend this [ticalc.org] small utility. I bet PedroM can't touch it.
      • I've always been curious. What is the apeal of RPN? It seems like such an ass-backwards way of calculating something. Why wouldnt you use the way of how you think of it in your head? "Two plus two". Im not flaming or trolling, I'm genuinly curious what writing your math out in a weird order gets you as far as productivity?

        Any answer would be great.
        • I love RPN and the reasons are sheer consistancy and no ambiguity. For infix algebraic calculators (and equations), you need parenthesis or your equation will mean something totally different from what you intend. However, with postfix "Reverse Polish Notation", there is absolutely no ambiguity. It is also more consistant in that EVERY operator comes after the arguments, not before or in between them.

          Why wouldnt you use the way of how you think of it in your head?

          I'm sure some there are some U:bergeeks

    • While a lot of effort is put into producing games, you can bet that if PedroM becomes popular among users that someone will take the time to write some math software for it, too. A lot of work has been done to extend the math functionality on the TI-83+ calculators, such as this application that can do symbolic differentiation and simplification [detachedsolutions.com] on a calc that doesn't otherwise have this functionality. Just because there's not math software available for PedroM doesn't mean there won't be later. Give it tim

  • All flash calcs have this ability (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cubeman ( 530448 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:05PM (#7719890)
    I'd like to point out that this OS works by use of the TIB receiver [ticalc.org], which allows an OS not signed by TI to be loaded on the calculator. This works for the TI-89, TI-92 Plus, and the Voyage 200.

    The other TI calculators with flash memory are the TI-73 and the TI-83 Plus. Personally, I've released the source for a rudimentary proof-of-concept OS [radicalsoft.org] (warning: knowledge of how to compile and send it required) for those just to demonstrate that a similar method exists. In fact, on the 83+ one can write to the flash memory with an assembly language program as well.

    To those who ask what the point is, it's exciting. Writing your own operating system is quite possibly the hardest thing that a programmer can do. On the computer, it's unmanageable because of complexity, but you can still balance complexity with functionality on a graphing calculator. The TI-83 Plus uses a Z80 chip, and the 89/92+/Voyage 200 a 68000k, so assembly isn't too bad. Most 89/92+/Voyage 200 programs are written in C though.

  • Great (Score:2, Interesting)

    by evn ( 686927 )
    I don't use my Ti-92+ in school as a calculator any more anyway (not many calculus teachers want you using any electronic devices at all) so this gives me something to do with it. 2mb rom, m68k 10mhz processor, link port: If we could get a graphical tool kit and a C toolchain it might be possible to make something roughly as capable as one of the original Mac or Lisa. Not powerful, but useful for note taking, tetris, and doing some simple calculations on the side - and has even more geek-factor than taki

    • Re:Great (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ari_j ( 90255 )
      I've toyed with writing enough Z80 assembly to get a working TCP stack, with the goal of connecting to IRC with an even more arcane device than netcat. SLIP is easy but you'd probably want to hardwire the IP addresses (PPP is really overkill unless you wrote a crippled IP-only version of it), IP isn't too hard although checksumming would be slow on the Z80, UDP and ICMP are elementary after that, and TCP isn't too tough. The hardest part is making all this available for other programs to use without stati

    • Re:Great (Score:3, Informative)

      by fireboy1919 ( 257783 )
      Um...there's already a C toolchain for it. There was before this (for almost as long as there has been TI92, which was out before 89 and uses the same processor) because there's one for M68K. All they had to do was add a few macros that added stuff so that it was up to par with the file specification for TI89/92.

  • backward compatibility for assembly programs? (Score:5, Informative)

    by windows ( 452268 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:06PM (#7719907)
    As someone who works at one of the large community sites about TI calculators, I'm in a position to comment on this.

    The OS attempts to be compatible in a lot of ways with the AMS (TI's OS for the 68k calcs) but it really isn't. A lot of the OS such as the math functionality is missing. A lot of assembly programs also rely on hacks to take advantage of the internals of the AMS. These won't work, also.

    Another thing is that the majority of assembly programs now are written for AMS 2.0x, but this software only allows for assembly programs written for the old AMS 1.0x. It's somewhat compatible, but is lacking in a lot of ways, too.

    The reasons that the compatibility is lacking are that we still haven't documented a lot of functions in the AMS and some features have intentionally been left out for the sake of using less Flash ROM and leaving more of it for the archives. In other places, some speed has been sacrificed for making the OS a lot smaller than the AMS.

    It's an interesting project, but at this point, it's more of a proof-of-concept thing than a real replacement for the AMS software. The future of this project, hopefully, will include most of the functionality of the TI-89, including math, but will provide significant advantages over the AMS. For example, the AMS makes a lot of restrictions on the size of assembly language programs and what they can do. These restrictions are gone in PedroM. Also, as I understand, this OS is written in assembly instead of compiled from C like the AMS is. Hopefully this means we can implement the same functionality of the AMS but that runs faster and at a smaller size.

    Good luck to PpHd. It's a good start. :)

  • Karma whore (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:12PM (#7719948)
    In case it gets Slashdotted, here's a copy of the article:

    Free, Open Source OS For TI Calculators
    Operating Systems
    Posted by timothy on Sunday December 14, @04:53PM
    from the smallness dept.

    nicklaszlo writes "TICalc.org announced yesterday that Patrick Pelisier has released a new beta OS, called PedroM, for the TI-89 and TI-92+ under the General Public License. Here is the source and binary. This is the first time a TI calculator has been free of proprietary software. The OS has 32 commands and backward compatibility for assembly programs. You can get a Windows/PC emulator of both calculators, for those who don't have either calculator, or don't want to risk their real system."
  • ...for my slide rule.
  • And I can honestly say that the single "feature" that is missing that I would most strongly desire is the ability to plug in more RAM into the sucker.

    I want to run java apps on a pocket calculator, not just be restricted to their idiotic perception of "BASIC".

    And no... I don't want a PDA... they are too fragile.

    • And I can honestly say that the single "feature" that is missing that I would most strongly desire is the ability to plug in more RAM into the sucker.

      I want to run java apps on a pocket calculator, not just be restricted to their idiotic perception of "BASIC".

      Yeah, it needs more memory, but you can still run the Waba Virtual Machine [ticalc.org] (which can run some java applets).

      Of course, gcc cross-compiling to the TI-89/92 has been happening for a long time.

  • Emulator (Score:5, Funny)

    by eap ( 91469 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:22PM (#7720034) Journal
    They are also working on a TI Calculator emulator for the new O/S. It will allow you to emulate a TI calculator right on your own calculator!

  • I want my HP-15C.

  • What calculator? (Score:5, Funny)

    by fdawg ( 22521 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @05:45PM (#7720180)
    "Can I borrow your calculator?"
    "Oh, its not a calculator. Its now a portable computer."
    "Can it minimize this equation for me?"
    "No"
    "What can it do?"
    "Well....it has a console...and it can add/subtract/multiply....."
    "Nevermind."

  • TI calculators would be a lot more interesting if they didn't force me to use algebraic entry. A modified OS that let me turn "=" into "enter" would be a big step forward.

    In the meantime, I'll stick with my HP-41CX and HP-16C.
    • Someone else posted this elsewhere on this story.

      I was reading through the documentation and it's pretty good, too.

      RPN for TI-89 [paxm.org]

    • Since I burned my mod points this morning I'll burn some karma... Amen Brother

      There's always been 2 sides to the TI vs. HP debate but IMO real geeks have always used HP calculators. We know they are superior to the TI riff raff. Always have been. (Here is where I was going to write "Always will be", but I don't know if that's necessarily true since HP seems to have largely given up). No one who knows their way around an RPN HP ever lost a competition involving speed, clarity of thought or lapses of
  • You can get a Windows/PC emulator of both calculators,

    Hm. Better would be "You can get a Windows/PC emulaator for both calculators ;-)

    So, really, what's the point if I can't run emulator on calculator even with free OS?

  • You won't believe this (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Sunday December 14, 2003 @06:09PM (#7720346)
    But back in grade 10 high school, a close friend of mine actually wrote a GUI Windows-like interface for the TI-83 calculator. It included start-menu style popup menus, Notepad application, etc. Super-crazy.

    These TI's have Z80 processors in them, anyone who knows Z80 assember can pull off some pretty amazing shit.
    • Actually, these TIs have motorola 68K processors in them, the sub-89 TIs have the z80.
    • I had seen someone write a return to wolfenstein clone. It only had 3 pixels for the gun back in my days of highschool in the early to mid 1990's.

      However I think a calculator should be used to uh, run calculations for math class. Its an essential tool that I would not want to f*ck with.

      However I also own a palm m100. :-) With free gnu tools and sdk's, let the games begin. Also since I do not have to replace the default os, I can feel comfortable using it for work and school and would not have to sacrific
    • These TI's have Z80 processors in them, anyone who knows Z80 assember can pull off some pretty amazing shit.

      As long as by "these" you mean old-fashioned ones. The TI-89, TI-92, and Voyage calculators use the 68K.

  • While I think the idea is cool as far as an open source theme goes...

    I see this as potentially a bad idea, as this might provide a segue into Spam...

    So now when I sit in my PDE's class, my calculator will be bugging me about getting my penis size enlarged.

  • This would be great except one thing... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kymermosst ( 33885 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @06:41PM (#7720516) Journal
    If you install it, the calculator no longer does math.

    Kinda defeats the purpose of having a calculator, no?

    Now if someone ported the yacas [xs4all.nl] engine to it, and made it similar to the original interface, that would be something!

    I'm not going to put an alternative OS on my calculator that just plays games, when I can have a gameboy advance for $100 and get color too!
  • With those links to a windoze emulator,I wonder if there could be anyone who cares so much about free software that he will want to free his calculator from proprietary crap (it is just fine up to here - I myself would install free software in a calculator if I had one) and would test said software in an emulator under windo~1.

  • but.. (Score:2)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) *
    can it run nethack?

    Probably yes

    Rus
    • nethack is much, much heavier than you would first think.

      i guess some rogue clone would be possible, but i doubt you could pull off getting it to run full nethack without dumping majority of the work somewhere else with some interface.
  • I've had my Ti85 for over 7 years now and the latest and greatest Ti calculator (in the same form factor) doesn't seem to have progressed much in the all the time. Next to phones, computers, MP3 players etc... the pocket calculator that started it all off hasn't changed at all! Are PDA's the new calculators? Are the any hardcore graphing calculator applications for PocketPC?
  • TI-News [ti-news.com] posted news about PedroM almost a week ago. And today ticalc.org posted news about a 3 month old program (Kirby's TI Land 1.0 was released 9/5/2003)... *sigh*
  • IT'S A FREAKING CALCULATOR. Do you REALLY need an open source operating system for a calculator? Was it's proprietary operating system ever really in question? Why, I remember the days, when I said to myself, "DAMNED BE TEXAS INSTRUMENTS! They'll rue the day! Their calculator hardware only runs their own operating system! It's a monopoly, I say!"
  • There really, really isn't one.

    There already exist C and C++ Compliers for these calculators; they also read ASM programs.

    Why do we need an open source OS that removes the math functions?

    Calculators should do math, hold periodic tables and simple text files, and *maybe* some phone numbers.

    That's it.
  • There have been previous attempts to make an operating system for the HP48 (I can't recall if it was OSS or not). Anyway some of the people involved in the project were approached by HP and were, at least in part, involved in the creation of the HP49 (which for example lost the Minehunt easter egg for a more hidden Tetris clone, pretty neat).

    The HP49 was actually a revolution for many, because it delivered everything that the HP48 didn't for years. And HP got the clue from hobbyists.

    So a new OS has great

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