It isn't really news, since it was out at least for 2 years, but there is effectively a new Casio calc emulator avaliable now, called NewGraph. It emulates the Casio FX-9860G model (altough for some reasons the emulator says 9960G, even thought there doesn't seems to be any), meaning the AFX series and the Classpad are no longer the only emulated calculators. I didn't got time to test everything but it seems to be almost fully functional. There is no documentation avaliable in readme form, though. Here is an animated screenshot made with Calc Capture and a static screenshot of the emulator:



You can download it here: http://www.casio-europe.com/de/downloads/sgr/eActivities-engl.zip

If Casio allows so, in the future we may be able to provide this emulator for download here at Omnimaga, in case the link would go down.

Cool you don't need a rom.

IMHO, before the FX-9860G models came out Casio graphing calcs were inferior to TIs programming wise. The commands are basically the same it seems on most calcs, even the cheap FX-9750G, but the Casio BASIC language is extremly slow compared to TI-BASIC. Some commands are at decent speed, but for example if you want to do Disp "HELLO WORLD", on Casios you simply do "HELLO WORLD", that's all. However on 2nd generation BASIC models it takes about 1/8 seconds for each character to appear, one by one, so if you want to disp text you better use Locate (which is the equivalent of Output, which is signifiantly slower). But even then the language is still much slower. The slower processors (4 MHz I think) doesn't help much though. Also the AFX models breaks after only a few years, because the flash memory (I think it's 768KB) lifetime is very short compared to the Casio FX-9860G and TI models. Also I heard that these models execute BASIC language even slower than CFX models (the ones with color screen). Also the only calcs with ASM support are Casio AFX and I think 9860G. C is also supported by Casio itself on Classpad 300 and 9860G but for other models you have to stick with BASIC. Another bad side is that the link cables for older models are extremly rare, since Casio graphing calcs are only avaliable in a limited amount of countries in low quantity, since TI dominates the market.

The good side of Casios is that the weaker models are generally cheap, they have good math functions, most has a screen of the same size than the TI-86. Despite the TI-BASIC limitations you can still do good games with it even if they are slow. And I can't wait to get my color screen calc to see if I can actually play around with the colors using TI-BASIC. Having seen screenshots of some RPGs like this one

I assume there is at least some possibilities.

I really think Casio did a good thing with the Casio FX-9860G models. They are much more powerful and faster than the older models and much more memory. There is even one model that supports SD cards. Since its release in 2005 I noticed the Casio community became a bit more active than it was when MLC died once back then.

Had this calc supported the 3 colors like the CFX models it would have got even more potential, since it has C support and maybe people could play with pixels to create grayscale and switch back and forth from a color to another to have purple/yellow (altough sometimes the screen might look a bit weird under light since LCD layers seems to be at slightly different levels)

Wow casio actually made an emulator, sweet deal that is cool. I mean I'm sure it is helpful for them because they can get people to try it out before they actually need them. And I know from my experience that I have teachers that use vti to show off stuff on the calc now they could use the casio emu too. Very cool all around.

Yeah that is weird I never noticed that!?

Not bad, the color models are really neat looking, but I also like the one that flips open and closed (don't remember which model it is).

true, they prbly promoted TI more and schools decided to go with them, plus TI-83+ seems easier to use than Casios, because as you turn them ON you go directly on home screen. Casios goes to a menu and you must figure out what's the equivalent of home screen (Run) and some other controls are a bit weird and some menus can be hard to find without a manual. On the TI-83+ menus are easy to navigate and simple. Graphing is also easier to access it seems. The downside is the higher demand=higher prices.

The lowest you could go in the two last grades in hi school over here was the TI-80. In hard math they told us that we should buy a TI-82 or TI-83+, but that a TI-80 could do ok, just with some minor limitations regarding graphing and some missing functions. I rarely ever seen TI-83 regular editions in my city. Most people either had TI-83+s and a minority had TI-80s and TI-82s.

Teachers never wanted us to use our calcs for graphing so really in highschool unless you were taking like calculus you never really needed any more than a scientific calc. It sure was nice to have the graphing calcs though.