Author Topic: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium (Read 25587 times)

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #15 on:** February 27, 2013, 11:49:28 pm »

To be honest, having no scrolling in RPGs shouldn't be too bad for the following reasons:

1) Until 2011, there were no finished TI-83+/84+ RPG that featured smooth scrolling except Joltima, and even Joltima doesn't really scrolls smoothly.
2) It was attempted before in such game, but it looked like crap because of motion blur so it rarely made it into final products, especially with grayscale.
3) Most NES/Game Boy adventure/RPGs had no scrolling and instead had Zelda-like screen-to-screen scrolling when the player reaches the map edges.

So even if there was no scrolling RPGs for the 84+CSE it wouldn't necessarily be much different than it was on older models. And now scrolling is even less needed now that you can fit 20x15 maps in one screen instead of 12x8. Of course if you do an adventure game like Ys or Zelda II then you might have some problems if you use an HUD since it would scroll with the map.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #16 on:** March 15, 2013, 04:06:04 am »

I didn't know that 7-zip opened mac executables but Jonimus opened TI-Connect for Mac with it and this is what he found: http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8920&highlight=

Quote

Sadly TI thought it would be a good idea to release TI Connect 4.0 for Mac first and have yet to release a windows version. Lets not let that ruin all the fun.

So as you might know 7-zip supports extracting .dmg's among many other fun formats. This lead me to poke around the the files within to see if there was anything fun.

And what do you know there is! I did this all a while ago and when I got my TI-84PCSE and there was no TI-Connect for windows 4.0 released I decided to poke around again.

If you point your 7zip at the DMG navigate to
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TIConnect_40.dmg\0.hfs\TI Connect\ticonnectx.pkg\ticonnectmanagerxinteraction.pkg\Payload\Payload~\.\TIConnectManagerXInteraction.framework\Versions\A\Headers\

In here we find all sorts of fun things like TI_DataTypes.h which has enums for almost every calculator datatype and command. Each package payload has its own fun to explore. Lets find some good stuff!

I'll update this first post as new fun tidbits are found. Also thanks to "Olivier Destrebecq", "Stephen L. Reid", "Glen Simmons", "Srinath Madas" and whoever at TI did the 4.0 update for TI-Connect for Mac and left all this fun stuff in here.

Update: Well I found something new. The Ti-84 Plus C Silver Edition has its own OS update extenstion.
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<string>8cu</string>
<string>8cU</string>
<string>8Cu</string>
<string>8CU</string>
found in the "OSExtensions" file in tiOsRestore.pkg\Payload\Payload~\.\TI OS Restore.app\Contents\Resources\

Update2: The new extensions are: 8CU - TI OS Update Document, 8ck - TI Flash Application, 8cq - TI Flash Certificate, 8ca - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Image, 8ci - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Picture

Is it still confirmed that programs, strings and other variables are remaining as 8x* files? I also am curious about if that executable contains OSes, because TI-Connect 1.6.1 for Windows comes with actual OS files after installation.

Juju · « **Reply #17 on:** March 16, 2013, 10:11:02 pm »

Well, that's interesting.

Note that mac executables are just folders with plenty of stuff inside such as metadata, the actual executable and some libraries to make it work, and OS X treats that folder as an executable so clicking on that folder would open the executable inside it instead of opening the actual folder. Which is kinda interesting.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #18 on:** March 26, 2013, 04:01:22 am »

Is it possible to erase the top bar and the frame surrounding graphs via short ASM programs? For example, if you erase the bar, along with the frame, then exit in a BASIC program, will the calculator screen remain intact or will it automatically get updated even without a ClrDraw/Disp/DispGraph? I am asking since I remember some 89 BASIC programs who erased the GUI via tiny ASM libs.

An example below with TI-Freakware's program:

aeTIos · « **Reply #19 on:** March 26, 2013, 04:46:42 am »

That'd be neat

DrDnar · « **Reply #20 on:** March 26, 2013, 11:28:48 am »

You can indeed erase the border. I'm not sure how often the OS redraws it, but it actually isn't very often because TI actually did try a tiny bit of optimization. The run indicator will come back, of course, unless the assembly program also turns it off.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #21 on:** March 26, 2013, 02:33:50 pm »

I guessed that it won't be redrawed when turning a pixel/line ON since it would make things too slow, but yeah I worried about when exiting programs. For example, on the HP 39gII, if you exit a program or a program ends, everything that the program displayed gets erased (in HP 39gII BASIC, stuff displayed on the screen almost acts like ASM/C on 68K calcs. It's even possible to do startup transitions like some 68K games.).

I assume that behind the run and battery indicator you will see a gray square, right (like Nyancat on the Nspire)?

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #22 on:** April 07, 2013, 01:07:18 am »

Anybody have tried to see how fast Stat plot drawing is? Is it faster to use it than simply drawing a big bunch of lines separately?

On the Casio PRIZM there is a stat plot command that gives about 1.8 FPS on a Mario sprite, while drawing two line alone separately gives roughly the same speed result.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #23 on:** April 10, 2013, 03:59:08 am »

I don't know if anyone still cares about TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition stuff on Omnimaga besides me, tifreak and the TI-Planet newsers (it seems like so, seeing the few replies to any 84C threads here in the past weeks), but I just noticed that on TI-BASIC Developer, which is the main wiki for TI-84 Plus BASIC programming, none of the commands nor extra arguments were added. There isn't even a single post mentioning the calculator on their forums, let alone plans to add the extra commands arguments to the TI-BASIC documentation.

Is anyone planning to add them, discuss how they should be added (separately or in different color to define color-only stuff like they did with Mathprint commands) or is the wiki just gonna remain exclusive to monochrome calcs?

It kinda sucks right now because that was the first place I went to to remember the color commands and arguments, only to find that they were still missing months after syntax discovery, so I ended up having to spend over 2 hours trying to find the TI-Planet post that included the syntax of some color commands...

Of course there's the Guidebook but the non-programming specific commands are scattered all over the place...

Lionel Debroux · « **Reply #24 on:** April 10, 2013, 07:59:05 am »

I can see at least two factors which might contribute to the current situation:
* physical 84+CSE calculators are still scarce in the real world;
* the 84+CSE is not quite the upgrade that we could have hoped for. It's a fairly underwhelming upgrade, as it brings limited functionality improvements over the 84+SE, and makes such simple operations as scrolling into a BASIC program much slower than on the earlier models of the 83+ family.
TI tried to attach too big a screen to too wimpy a processor. They didn't even raise the clock speed of the Z80, which would certainly have been possible, as shown by the recent 84+SE overclocking achievements. Even with a 68000, a color screen of that size would have been a bad idea... it's insane with the less powerful Z80.

DrDnar · « **Reply #25 on:** April 10, 2013, 02:07:39 pm »

DJ_O, I certainly have little intent of doing anything BASIC-related in the near future, due to my assembly language expertise.

It wouldn't have been so bad if TI had upgraded the ASIC with extra RAM, and more importantly, some kind of simple sprite-based graphics accelerator. Such a circuit could output 1 pixel every clock cycle, which would be about a 30-fold improvement over the Z80. So once the font data were loaded, displaying text would be a simple matter of telling it where to draw the sprites (letters). However, it seems TI was hell-bent on not having to change the ASIC. But as we all keep saying, TI really could have easily made that unnecessary by simply raising the clock speed. At 25 MHz, I suspect the calculator would feel much more responsive. I'm still trying to devise new and creative methods of tapping into those unused pins.

Also, I suspect the 68K would be able to drive the display far better. The 68K has pipe-lining and a wider bus, so it could probably output a pixel far better than the Z80's rate of about 30 cc/px. I don't know how well-pipe-lined the 68K is, but 3 cc/px would basically make it ten times faster at 15 MHz, making the display speed completely reasonable.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #26 on:** April 10, 2013, 02:13:49 pm »

Yeah I agree. I just mean that if absolutely zero Omnimaga member ever becomes interested in the calc in the future, while there are programs coming out from members elsewhere, then everyone who buys the calc or wants one will simply migrate elsewhere, leaving Omnimaga with no chance to expand its userbase. Remember what happened with the Casio PRIZM. I know calc84maniac and tr1p1ea got the calc, but they didn't show any sign of life in the past week or so regarding 84+C stuff, even with the horizontal scrolling showcase.

I'm still planning to try to do some stuff, but I'm still waiting for my calc to arrive due to the UPS ransom fiasco. (As of April 3rd, it departed USPS sorting facility)

DrDnar · « **Reply #27 on:** April 10, 2013, 02:17:50 pm »

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on April 10, 2013, 02:13:49 pm

I know calc84maniac and tr1p1ea got the calc, but they didn't show any sign of life in the past week or so regarding 84+C stuff, even with the horizontal scrolling showcase.

calc84 is pretty busy with college, though I have no clue what tr1p1ea is or isn't doing. Nevertheless, they do want to write stuff, as do I, but we all have our lives to deal with.

Lionel Debroux · « **Reply #28 on:** April 10, 2013, 02:24:30 pm »

The 68000 would do better than the Z80 at managing the color screen, but not as low as 3 cycles per pixel

In general, fetching or writing a word (16 bits) takes 4 processor clock cycles. NOP is 4 clock cycles, as are 16-bit operations into registers and several 32-bit operations (move between registers, moveq #n, swap dn, exg xn,xn, etc.). It has direct memory to memory moves as well.
All in all, micro-benchmarks with 16-bit pixels would be in the 10-20 clock cycles per pixel ballpark (depending on whether straight moves, or bitwise operations, are performed), which is consistent with 1-bit pixels being read or written at less than 1 clock cycle per pixel on the TI-68k series.

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #29 on:** April 10, 2013, 04:41:40 pm »

Quote from: DrDnar on April 10, 2013, 02:17:50 pm

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on April 10, 2013, 02:13:49 pm
I know calc84maniac and tr1p1ea got the calc, but they didn't show any sign of life in the past week or so regarding 84+C stuff, even with the horizontal scrolling showcase.
calc84 is pretty busy with college, though I have no clue what tr1p1ea is or isn't doing. Nevertheless, they do want to write stuff, as do I, but we all have our lives to deal with.

Yeah that could be it. I just hope they don't run into some sort of serious speed limitation or something that makes them lose interest.

That said more doc on RAM areas might be useful, so people can easily make small ASM libs and stuff. Currently WikiTI doesn't seem to have much.

Author Topic: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium (Read 25587 times)

DJ Omnimaga

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

DJ Omnimaga

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

Juju

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

DJ Omnimaga

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

aeTIos

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

DrDnar

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

DJ Omnimaga

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

DJ Omnimaga

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

DJ Omnimaga

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

Lionel Debroux

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

DrDnar

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

DJ Omnimaga

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

DrDnar

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

Lionel Debroux

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium

DJ Omnimaga

Re: 84CC - TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition Consortium