I just saw this now and it's a third-party calculator prototype: http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=15345&p=170930&hilit=omnimaga#p170930



Some of you probably remember Ubercalc and OTCalc and how they never got past planning stages (although Ubercalc had a prototype, the author then started rebooting the project from scratch non-stop until he finally vanished). Unlike past projects, Librecalc seems to have gotten past planning stages it seems because there's a physical prototype out. It's kinda an emulator, though, inside a custom calc case.

I am curious if it will get further into development? It would be interesting to see how such community calculator get manufactured, seeing how much of a PITA it seems to be to mass-produce stuff for small companies or groups of individuals (just see how long it takes for Pier Solar (Sega Genesis) pre-orders to be shipped). I also hope that it doesn't just remain an emulator so that it can take advantage of its full processing power and doesn't run into copyright problems (but again, if people from China are involved then with China standards this would be pretty standard). The HP 50g is basically a Saturn CPU emulator running a modded HP 48g ROM and it's a shame to see this much processing power go to waste.

Actually that's a TI-82 simulator, not an emulator, so no copyrighted ROMs. And yeah, nice to see such a project with a working prototype.

Oh right I didn't realize it was a simulator. I guess TI might not like if it works pretty much exactly as the TI-82, although it's still interesting to see this come to fruition. Let's hope it goes further.

With mass producing, sometimes they require you to sell like 10000 copies before they finally mass produce the item, so that costs are lower. But if it takes like 4 months to get 1000 pre-orders then you're in for years of wait. With the Sega Genesis reprint version of Pier Solar and the Great Architect, it has been three years since the 3rd print run was supposed to be manufactured and now it has yet to be done.

Also for some reasons, I thought this was from China until I checked the official website, which was in French. I guess I got confused with Arithmax and the fact many of those projects seems to originate from China lately. Also if it would have been a 82 emulator for real that comes pre-loaded with a ROM then being from China would have been very plausible, since piracy is rampant in that country.

Yeah the main problem really comes when somebody makes an emulator himself but in fact it's a simulator or vice-versa, which can confuse people and those who talk about the software. Although emulation would be nice for the sake of Z80 compatibility (but then there's a massive speed loss)

So, a simulator?

Well, what is nice is that everything on this calc is free software, so if you're hardcore enough you can build your own from your bare hands.

It's progressing!

Some electronic circuit issues delayed the 2nd prototype but it's still alive and well:



Something I hope is changes to the d-pad, though. But it has 128 MB of RAM .

Source (all in French):
http://www.librecalc.com/blog/apercu-du-second-prototype/
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=173986&sid=66d79eef6cf2409299636659ab1f5ae9#p173986
http://www.planet-casio.com/Fr/forums/topic13405-1-Le-projet-LibreCalc-avance-bien.html