I saw the Prizm on google shopping, for $120, but there was no major sellers.

Yep: Google Shopping Casio Prizm

About Google shopping this has to be the prototypes, right? They do not state it's a pre-order, it seems...

Be sure to check the seller ratings and source in any case, though, in case it's a hoax.

Yeah, there's still over a month to go.

Quote from: Deep Thought on November 21, 2010, 06:55:01 pm

The sellers' overall ratings actually look pretty good. Mostly 4s and 5s. According to some of them, they're just preordering, so they start shipping when the calculators actually come out. Kinda early for ordering though, if you ask me.

I mean, it's one of the firsts colored calculators, people think it is awesome just because of that :S

Not one of the firsts..

The 1st color graphic calculator is the cfx-9800G, and was released by Casio in 1993.
It had a 96x64 LCD. The 2-bit encoding of the colors made it able to display 4 different colors.

But Casio calculators were just crap at the end of the last century...


Since then, Casio has released other color graphic calculators with a better 128x64 screen (larger than the TI-82/83/83+/84 screen):
fx-9970G (1998), cfx-9860G+/GC+ (2004)

But they were still using a 2-bit color encoding, so only supporting 4 colors without assembly.


The Prizm is not going to be the first color graphic calculator, but the first graphic calculator with a 16-bit color encoding, making it able to display 65536 different colors.

Wow I didn't knew about the 9800G . I was sure the first color calc was in 1996 with the FX-9850G+, which has a 128x64 LCD. Also I was sure it was 3 colors, not 4. My CFX-9860G has orange, blue and green.

I wish ASM was possible without flashing the ROM chip on those models. Even with 3-4 colors, imagine what you could do in ASM by quickly flashing some pixels (like we do on the 83+ for grayscale) or if you could change the color palette how you want. It would be epic.

Even with 3 colors + the LCD color it wouldn't be that bad for a calculator. Mockup of what could have been FF1 if the CFX-9850G got jailbreaked back when it was still in production:

Yes, you're right.
2-bits = 4 different colors

But those 4 different colors include the state where the pixel is turned off (which is "blank" or "black", depending upon he screen).

So that's only 3 displayed colors, but still 4 "colors" for your games/pictures.

I think this has lots of quality for a calculator image!

The Prizm is not going to be the first color graphic calculator, but the first graphic calculator with a 16-bit color encoding, making it able to display 65536 different colors.

You'll still need Assembly to access most of them. The BASIC language on the Prizm will only give you access to 7 colors. They are Black, Blue, Red, Magenta, Green, Cyan, and Yellow respectively. That's ignoring the hopeful reality that the Prizm's BASIC may be fast enough to allow color mixing in the same manner as greyscale for the TI-83+ series. If it isn't, then assembly libraries can always help out in that area.

The Prizm will also have a few functionalities with regards to color. There will be four commands that allow you to manipulate the colors displayed. The first two are the paint commands ColorNormal and ColorLighter. Those will be limited as they can only be used with graphs and certain statistical drawings. Casio also included two commands called ColorAuto and ColorClr. Those probably do what you'd expect.

Additionally, there's a method to display background pictures. It's kind of odd and involves file paths (Yay, a Computer-like OS!), but if Casio allows us to download pictures in a normal format (not likely) or someone can make a converter (likely), then it could be used to make awesome title screens.

That's pretty much the scope of the color commands that will be available on the Prizm. Keep in mind that almost all of the data structures and the output/drawing commands will support at least one of the above commands.

PS: I've figured out that I'm not going to take a vacation form omni after all. It's too easy to access
That's another sign...