Thank you so much, JW.

So I have to hack my nSpire to get into the filesystem to be able to do ANYTHING really?

If I have further questions, I will ask

The 84+'s MathPrint is just TI bringing to the TI-Z80 series, a subset of the printing sugar that the TI-92 and the rest of the TI-68k series have been providing since circa 1996. It does not bring all symbolic computation abilities, as jwalker indicates.

And yes, Lua programs cannot access the Nspire's filesystem. That's one of the ways TI's non-standard Lua implementation is crippled. Only native code provides access to the Nspire's filesystem.

Quote from: Stefan Bauwens on March 15, 2013, 03:30:11 pm

Hmm. Of what I've seen the Nspire is actually way above the PRIZM. I think TI therefore released the TI-84+ Color to compete with the PRIZM, instead of the Nspire, which is "way out of it's liege"

Excuse me, but for some reason I've gotten some biased feeling towards the PRIZM, since "they"(some prizm fans) *try* to make it seem so much better than the Nspire, but it's actually the only other color calc they could run to to "boycott" TI because they didn't like some features. And it always seems like they try to minimize the power of LUA too.

Here's the article, which is not biased by the way(): http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=articles;sa=view;article=87

Actually the 84+CSE is way inferior to the PRIZM except in one way:

Calculator PRIZM 84+CSE
User RAM 61 KB 21 KB
Total RAM 2048 KB 128 KB
Flash 16 MB 3 MB
CPU 58 MHz 15 MHz
Overclocked 94.3 MHz 15 MHz
BASIC colors 8 15
ASM colors 65536 65536

In raw hardward comparison, that's 100% true, that's actually why the comparison was done earlier (and still is), to the Nspire CX (non-CAS) since it was the one competing against especially when it came out, in which case, the Nspire wins easily.

However, PRIZM BASIC can be up to 30 times slower than the 84+CSE, add-ins are minimum 29 KB large instead of 16 and it doesn't support the ability to use ASM libs inside BASIC programs.

Why is it so bad ?

The Nspire is far superior in power, but it lacks proper TI-BASIC (lua doesn't count, because it's much more complex than TI-83+ BASIC in terms of syntax size and much slower than Axe, otherwise people wouldn't be switching from Nspire dev to 84+ Axe one after another)

The Nspire Basic is crap for drawing things for example, but I find it way better than the z80 for doing math-related stuff. THen, Lua could be the Axe of the z80, since it allows kind of anything, graphics-related, and offers cool things like a physics engine, etc. in several ways like Axe, far superior to Basic. And then, the Nativ programming of the Nspire would be the native of the z80 too. Btw, what do you mean "otherwise people wouldn't be switching from Nspire dev to 84+ Axe one after another" ? I haven't really heard of people doing so ? (or aat least not in such amount that it's really considerable ?) I personnaly believe programming on the Nspire has nothign to do with programmiing on other platforms. On the Nspire, you have multiple devices to work with (calc, computer software, iPad app now...), the z80 really are for high-schoolers, I guess, where it's all focused on being a portable/handheld device, where users can use it in classes and do everything on it, "mostly".

and you face the constant threat that TI might block Ndless for the latest OS

Well, it's more of a fact than a threat. They just keep [trying / succeding depending on the OS version] to block it in the latest updates

then make Ndless-compatible OSes unavailable online (eg deleting the OSes from their servers then sending DMCA notices to people re-hosting them, like they did with OS 1.1)

So far, it's been "accepted" on TI-Planet. At least we haven't received such request from them. But at the same time, it's part of our "digital museum" for TI related things, and i personnaly believe the more OS we save, the better... it would be a pity to just lose an OS version because some rare hosts....

I would gladly host an OS, under the right circumstances. The Nspire really just needs a way to crash it and call to a random place in memory so you can run any code you want, no matter the OS. Hacking the boot code of a calculator would be the best way to do it, albeit a bit unsafe. That way, no matter the upgrade, if we set things up right, we'd be upgrade-proof, unless they try messing with the boot code we modified. So there you have it America.

One does not need such things as "ASM libraries to enchance BASIC programming" if you are a BASIC master. The only good thing about those is that it can speed things up, and take up less memory. However, it can cause crashes, weird behavior, compatibility issues, and confuse newbs who don't know anything about them. I've actually stopped using ANY libraries in my programming of TI BASIC.

I don't like TI not supporting OOP... Hmm. Well somebody tell me if my "boot hack" isn't a great idea, like it is for the Nintendo Wii?

As the boot1 isn't writeable, an exploit in it to run any boot2 would give us almost everything that a custom boot1 could.

Doesn't Lua support some aspects of OOP?

Actually the Nspire Lua's OOP is pretty nice

Believe it or not, there hasn't been a decision yet. I'm not a superprogrammer yet. I can't write a random terrain generator in 15 mins. Or 15 days, for that matter.

However, event-based programing is new to EVERYONE soo.. Thanks for bringing that up!

Well I wouldn't mine more oncalc programmability for both of them, like a C compiler! Can't I use a text editor to write progs on either, or even a prog editor like the one on the 84+?  and then compile or execute?

I like that he is focusing on mmy programing because that is a major concern. Before too long, the emulators on the Nspire should support all the gaming consoles I ever wanted, and all the TI calcs I ever wanted (Maybe the whole 8x series!!)... And the file transfer on it doesn't seem like much. Somebody told me it'd be difficult.

Did I mention to you guys I have severe ADHD? anyway...

I'll be looking for OS v. 3.2 exploits.