Omnimaga
Calculator Community => Other Calculators => Topic started by: chiefpiggy on August 21, 2012, 04:59:13 pm
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Alright guys so I have a question: there are two great color calculators out thre, the Nspire cx cas and Casio prism. Which one should I buy? Or should I just bide my time until the new cm-c or cx-c to come out?
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It really depends on what you need.
The -C calculators (CM-C and CX-C) aren't too different from the ones without the -C except that they're labeled in Chinese. (If you want Chinese, the Nspires already have localization settings.)
In terms of math, the CX CAS is far superior to the Casio Prizm or normal CX because it has a [wikipedia]computer algebra system[/wikipedia]. It's geared mainly for higher-level math (beyond calculus), similar to the TI-89/92/V200 series (which also has a CAS). As far as I can tell, the Prizm was designed to compete against the TI-83 Plus series, so the math functions are fairly similar to the ones on those calculators. The plain CX might be slightly better, but probably not by much. Both calculators have prettyprint notation (or MathPrint, whatever you call it).
In terms of gaming, there's historically been more development on the Nspire series than the Prizm series, which is why you'll see Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and NES emulators on the CX but not the Prizm. Nspires also have Lua built in, which offers another boost in terms of variety of games (since it's a fairly easy language to use and many games have been made in it already). However, Kerm's working on a port of Lua to the Prizm—it's not finished yet, but I'd imagine it'll really help out Prizm game designers. The CX also offers better potential than the Prizm because of its specs: it has more memory and more speed. Hence why nDOOM runs significantly faster than CGDOOM.
In terms of cost, the Prizm is way cheaper than the CX (like half the cost). In fact, the official price for a Casio Prizm is just around the official price of a plain, black TI-83 Plus—there's TI's market dominance for you XD
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but are the -c calculators coming to america ever?
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I guess the question also is do you already have a graphing calculator? Are either of these a necessity for you? How much do you want to spend? Deep thought covered it pretty well for you though. Personally I own calcs as a hobbyist/collector. I won't buy the nSpire due to TI's refusal to have it as an open platform. I do own a Prizm. There are not as many developers for Prizm though, so things tend to come out more slowly.
*edit* Fixed a stupid spelling error.
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i am fascinated that now developers are putting videogames on calculators (cause they make classtime that much more fun!) i have a v200 but there isn't much space on that for games. The cx has tons of space for games and can play gba, gbc, and nes games whis is amazing. I wanted to know if the -c has better gaming perfrmance
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I can't imagine why the CX-C would be any different from the CX (it looks the same except for the key labels, and I'd assume the C just stands for China). The CM-C would definitely be worse because it has half the RAM (http://ourl.ca/9743/178247/).
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Again Deep thought is correct, and it seems likely the CM-C models will not come here. There have been other instances of TI producing models for specific regions such as the TI-84 Pocket (Europe) and the TI-84 Pocket SE(China), and many of the french models (TI-76 fr, TI-82 stats).
Also: The V200 has quite a lot of space for games. Aside from the nSpire series I believe it has the most space available. You should be able to fit plenty of stuff on there. :) Unfortunately development for the 68k series is very slow these days (TI-89, TI-89 Titanium, Ti-92+ V200)as TI doesn't promote them much anymore. There is a fairly large library of older programs that has been developed for them though as it used to be a very popular platform. You should check <a href=http://www.ticalc.org>Ticalc.org's archives</a> to see what I mean. :) Until you get another calc (if you decide to) the V200 is still a very nice machine.
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but when i try to send pokemon games on (3 files at a time as directed) it always runs out of space! there are always no other files on it besides the kernel, gb68k and their files, and the hw3patch. I really dont know what the hw3patch does but whatever.
ive also tried doing the -pack extension when converting the files but the same thing happens. i have put on a smaller game, contra, and that works just fine but pokemon games dont work
ive tried pokemon red, blue, and gold. neither of them are small enough to fit on my calc
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Do you store them in RAM? You should keep as much as possible in th flash memory. It's much bigger and everything in there is (usually) safe during a crash.
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i always store in the flash rom man but when it says it runs out of mem i actually check the mem and theres still tons of space left :(
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Hmm.... I'm not sure. I'd try reseting all your memory. Resend everything and try again.
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seemingly inexplicable things like that happen fairly often on TI's hardware, and, like art said, usually the only way to fix it is by resetting things. if even overwriting the operating system doesn't do anything, though, you should post about the issue somewhere. there isn't much 68k activity around here, but someone might be able to help you out all the same.
as for calculators, i like the prizm much more, because of how open it is to writing programs. if you are going to be using it only as a device for playing games, though, then an nspire, with it's larger available library, is probably the better option.
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Heya, here is my opinion on each available series of calc
TI-83 Plus Pros: The second largest variety of games available on any model, after the 84+ (almost all 84+ games run on the 83+ or vice-versa), and some of the best classics. Very documented and has many easy to learn languages
TI-83 Plus cons: Half slower than the TI-84+, very small amount of memory, crappy screen
TI-84 Plus/SE Pros: The largest variety of game available on any model, and some of the best classics, by far. Very documented for programming and has many easy to learn languages
TI-84 Plus/SE Cons: Crappy resolution and no color, limited RAM, even though the calc costs the same price as the PRIZM.
TI-Nspire Pros: Best CPU, memory and a standard screen resolution for gaming (at least old skool games), a decent choice of programming languages (providing you got one of the latest OSes), no need to buy AAA batteries.
TI-Nspire Cons: Expensive, closed platform, where every OS update you risk losing the ability to run games like nDOOM or the GBA emulator. It's like Apple with iOS and Cydia or Sony with PSN. Not a lot of games either, most being ports or emulators of existing games. The CAS version is banned in most tests.
Casio PRIZM Pros: Second best CPU, memory, high screen resolution, wide screen and lots of programming potential. Cheap price considering the specs.
Casio PRIZM Cons: Not very popular compared to TI calcs, small selection of games, although if you wait a bit, that might change eventually. Small selection of programming languages, although that will change soon.
TI-89/v200 Pros: Second best selection of games, slightly more performant than the 84+
TI-89/v200 Cons: Expensive, banned from most tests, almost nobody program it anymore so nothing new comes out or almost. On the possible verge of being discontinued.
Casio FX-9860G Pros: Cheap, similar specs to the 84+ although higher RAM, a decent selection of games and languages
Casio FX-9860G Cons: Almost nobody seems to program it at all nowadays in the English community.
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Realy It depends on what you want to do. Personaly, I do both and own an Nspire CX, Nspire clickpad and a Prizm.
The Nspire CX is great for math and playing games (when not locked down) that are written in C/ASM. Lua is also a very easy to learn language and you can make games with it. It also has alot of memory, you can store several doom wads on it.
The prizm is an open platform, so your games written in C/ASM probably wont be blocked. The switch to the prizms interface from a TI one is kind of hard. The math features are deffinately similar to that of a TI-84+, like Art said.
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Well interface-wise it depends. If he's switching from a TI-80-86, he should get familiar with any Casio calc pretty quickly, even the PRIZM. If he's switching from a TI-Nspire or a 68K calc, however, then that's another story. Also the TI-85/86 uses almost the exact same home screen interface as the Casio models, with the small menu at the bottom of the screen, where you use F1 through F5 to choose options. On MP OSes on the 84+, such menus also exist now.
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On MP OSes on the 84+, such menus also exist now.
Though the layout is slightly different; you also use Up/Down to navigate submenus.
Even if he's switching from an Nspire of 68k, the 80-86/Casio interface is pretty quick to learn.
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Also, iirc, TI has the free manual uploaded in their website, which is actually quite useful for learning interface.
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On MP OSes on the 84+, such menus also exist now.
Though the layout is slightly different; you also use Up/Down to navigate submenus.
Even if he's switching from an Nspire of 68k, the 80-86/Casio interface is pretty quick to learn.
Personally, even after learning the Casio UI, I still find the TI way of doing things much, much better. Casio tends to (ab)use the F1-F6 keys a lot, which IMO is somewhat a clunky way of navigating. Even bringing up that F1-F6 menu can sometimes be non-trivial.
As for development, things *might* get better for the Casio Prizm. With the upcoming LuaZM (Prizm Lua port) there's also a port of the libc, something that has been a big roadblock for much Prizm dev. (The only activity from before was from people using the raw API, and those who knew how to write directly to the screen.)
For the Nspire, development has never been looking much sunnier :) There are very nice graphic libraries, like nSDL and nRGBLib, that can be used, as well as NspireIO for console dev. (Not to mention that Nspire already has a working C library!) And of course, Nspire Lua has been very popular too ;)
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On MP OSes on the 84+, such menus also exist now.
Though the layout is slightly different; you also use Up/Down to navigate submenus.
Even if he's switching from an Nspire of 68k, the 80-86/Casio interface is pretty quick to learn.
Personally, even after learning the Casio UI, I still find the TI way of doing things much, much better. Casio tends to (ab)use the F1-F6 keys a lot, which IMO is somewhat a clunky way of navigating. Even bringing up that F1-F6 menu can sometimes be non-trivial.
Yeah, it's the same thing with the TI-85 and TI-86. I never liked the horizontal navigation system because very few items can be shown at once (on the 85/86, only three when you're in the middle of a menu), and it's a lot easier to lose track of where you are in the menu because there's no context (such as numbering or the horizontal "tab" row the TI-83 series uses).
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*Bump* I don't think it's really worth opening a new topic to discuss something that i'm sure has been discussed a million times before, buuut i'm thinking of getting a new calculator or two, for (assembly) programming. The Casio PRIZM really interests me and i'd like to play around with SH4 assembly. And on top of that, while i don't think either company is a saint, Casio seems much more open/forward thinking than TI, which is a bummer since i've always really enjoyed the TI calcs i've had. So i think i'd like to get a PRIZM. The real question is i've always been more of an 82/83/83+ person. I got an SE cheap off eBay when they first came out and it was nice, but it never seemed as sturdy as the 83+, lots more crashes, etc. I've never had anything from the 84 series but i've heard lots of negative things about them (and lots of good things), and not to mention i think they look much uglier than the old 83+s ;) I feel like for just testing my programs the 83+ has always been the most stable. None of the calcs i had previously survived high school, most of them being stolen or, in the case of my 89T borrowed/never returned, so now i just want something to test my games out on. Is there anything to be weary about when buying an 84+/SE?
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*Bump* I don't think it's really worth opening a new topic to discuss something that i'm sure has been discussed a million times before, buuut i'm thinking of getting a new calculator or two, for (assembly) programming. The Casio PRIZM really interests me and i'd like to play around with SH4 assembly. And on top of that, while i don't think either company is a saint, Casio seems much more open/forward thinking than TI, which is a bummer since i've always really enjoyed the TI calcs i've had. So i think i'd like to get a PRIZM. The real question is i've always been more of an 82/83/83+ person. I got an SE cheap off eBay when they first came out and it was nice, but it never seemed as sturdy as the 83+, lots more crashes, etc. I've never had anything from the 84 series but i've heard lots of negative things about them (and lots of good things), and not to mention i think they look much uglier than the old 83+s ;) I feel like for just testing my programs the 83+ has always been the most stable. None of the calcs i had previously survived high school, most of them being stolen or, in the case of my 89T borrowed/never returned, so now i just want something to test my games out on. Is there anything to be weary about when buying an 84+/SE?
I bought a TI-83+SE and so-far have no problems with it. Also it can run some programs that the TI-83+ cannot run(e.g:Devrays). FOr the rest I don't really know a lot about the SE's.
Also, I just want to point out that TI isn't evil or something,(not saying you said that, but there are definitely some people that will say that). The reason why TI has blocked ndless several times is to avoid that people create programs in C to allow cheating in class.
Rightly so, since eventually someone made something like that( http://ourl.ca/16362 )
(Note that the comments made by Jim and Adriweb or sarcasm).
Also if anyone is interested I created this article once about the difference between the casio PRIZM and the TI Nspire: http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=articles;sa=view;article=87
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Cool, thanks for the article. I've already pretty much decided on getting a PRIZM, but i'm not sure if there's anything with the hardware to worry about for the 84+s (the LCD driver, extra RAM pages, etc.). The hardest part will probably be finding some place in China that sells them :/
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Apparently the LCD driver stuff is a bit slow, but seeing the games that came out for it so far (eg CGDoom and Cubefield) I think it should be fine.
And yeah in China it might be a bit hard, because so far the Chinese members we got usually had Nspires. X.x
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From what I've seen the 84+s have better screens, but the lcd response time is really quite widley varied an sometimes the quality is too. The 83+ SE do seem to be a bit frail for whatever reason (I've had 2 die on me :o). I have a 3rd 83+SE that seems to be doing fine. As far as durability, the 84+ and 84+Se seem to be pretty decent, but like i said, the lcds are really inconsistent from one model to the next.
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I guess most people nowadays have an 84+/SE (or an 82 Stats.fr ;)), so it's probably what i should be using to test on anyway. Now i'll have to see if i can find some place that can send one here :D
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Yeah I remember the 83+SE models always seemed to break faster than their 83+/84+/84+SE counterpart, usually the LCD getting glitchy or other issues. Idk why...
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Alright guys so I have a question: there are two great color calculators out thre, the Nspire cx cas and Casio prism. Which one should I buy? Or should I just bide my time until the new cm-c or cx-c to come out?
http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8118
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Alright guys so I have a question: there are two great color calculators out thre, the Nspire cx cas and Casio prism. Which one should I buy? Or should I just bide my time until the new cm-c or cx-c to come out?
http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8118
Better to make an opinion yourself instead of seeing an ad for the Prizm: http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=articles;sa=view;article=87
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Although back in the days, there was nearly no more hope for the CX and it looked like TI was on a total rampage against the entire community. Today they still fight Ndless, but it seems they slacked off (since OS 3.2 still lets you downgrade back to an Ndlessable OS, even though the OS came out several months after Ndless 3.1) and spent a bit more time improving Lua.
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Although back in the days, there was nearly no more hope for the CX and it looked like TI was on a total rampage against the entire community. Today they still fight Ndless, but it seems they slacked off (since OS 3.2 still lets you downgrade back to an Ndlessable OS, even though the OS came out several months after Ndless 3.1) and spent a bit more time improving Lua.
Eh, if you're talking about that page where Qwerty link to, it can't be, because he talks about Lua.
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Oh when I saw the Cemetech link then the Hayleia post that ensued, I thought he linked to the Nspire CX boycott article. My bad :P
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Btw, does anyone have any experience with the HP50g? How does it compare to say the TI 89T? I think learning ARM assembly would be interesting and could even be useful later for playing around with the GBA. The specs seem to show that it has a much faster processor, but the games and things i've seen online for it all seem pretty basic and people even complained of certain games running slowly. I just ordered an 84+ (not an SE pocket, since it was more than twice as expensive) and the Casio Prizm online today :) It'll be weird having more than two colors to choose from!
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It'll be weird having more than two colors to choose from!
You already have more than 2 colors with the 83+ since you can do greyscale with it ;)
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@Chickendude: Congrats on your purchases.
I don't know about from a programming standpoint, but many engineers swear by the HP 50G. I have one myself, but it is just collecting dust. :/ I wasn't really able to find much at all about programming them either. I guess there isn't much of a fan base around the for creating games and such.
*Edit* I bought mine before the nSpire and Prizm came out. At the time it was one of the most powerful and high res. models out.
*Edit2*: IIRC, it runs in emulation mode to begin with. The older models used Saturn ASM, and I think you can write in that. However I believe you can break out of the emulation mode as well and write Using the regular (ARM?) ASM as well. I seem to remember there being some form of BASIC, RPN, and C available as well. It has been a while though, so I'm not 100% sure.
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Yeah, online i've read that it.. emulates Saturn ASM? There were several programming languages you could use (including C), but i'm much more interested in ARM assembly.
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The HP50g is a very great machine, but unfortunately HP calculators never had much of an online community. D:
It sucks because some models supported ARM and I'm sure porting TI-Nspire programs would not be super hard, aside from the much lower screen resolution.
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Do you know how it compares hardware-wise? It seems like it has a pretty nice processor. I remember back in the day seeing lots of Zelda demos for HP calcs, but they always seemed fairly similar to our 83/+ Zelda demos.
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Btw, how much FLASH does an 84+ (not SE) have? I just got mine and it seems to have 1.5 MB, i thought they only had something like 500kb...?
EDIT: And how can i test if i've got the extra RAM pages?
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1.5mb flash is on the 84pse, the 84pbe gives you 480k.
As for the RAM pages, it depends on your hardware revision, which you can tell by looking at the serial on the back.
(last letter of the whole thing, ie A-0102B )
If it's before G it has the full 128k ram.
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Then why does mine have 1.5 MB? Also, not to seem thick, but where is the serial number? I just see some patent numbers and a place to write your name... Does the "About" screen tell you anything? Thanks :)
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Buy a gameboy advance. This will play all of the mentioned games and it is cheaper.
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The serial number should be engraved between the wide indents on the back of the calc (below where the name goes)
So it doesn't say Silver Edition at the top of the case or on the about screen, yet still has 1.5mb archive? 0.o
Btw the about screen at 2nd > mem > 1 shows the type of calc it is, the installed OS and some unique stuff used to identify/register it.
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Ah that space is empty :/
EDIT: The about screen DOES say Silver Edition, but the case doesn't. Weird.
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Buy a gameboy advance. This will play all of the mentioned games and it is cheaper.
Can it run quadratic solvers and Reuben Quest, though? <_<
Ah that space is empty :/
EDIT: The about screen DOES say Silver Edition, but the case doesn't. Weird.
Looks like someone put a 84+ calc inside a 84+SE case... O.O
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Other way around, an 84+SE inside an 84+ case, but yeah! And i thought i was just getting a regular 84+ and bought it 'cuz it was about half the price of the SE :P Now i just need to figure out if it's got the extra RAM pages...
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Other way around, an 84+SE inside an 84+ case, but yeah! And i thought i was just getting a regular 84+ and bought it 'cuz it was about half the price of the SE :P Now i just need to figure out if it's got the extra RAM pages...
Hint: look at the back, and read the last letter in the string.
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How do you know it then?
/me always wanted to know on his calc...
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Other way around, an 84+SE inside an 84+ case, but yeah! And i thought i was just getting a regular 84+ and bought it 'cuz it was about half the price of the SE :P Now i just need to figure out if it's got the extra RAM pages...
Oh right I got it backward lol. My bad.
Do you remember when people did that with TI-89's? I remember on United-TI or something some people said they put their 89 into a 83+ case. I believe it's possible with the 89T and the 84+/SE too.
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I've seen a YouTube video of this.
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I think there might be a program somewhere that tells you if you have the extra ram..I want to say thepenguin or calc84 made it but I'm not sure.
You could always try something like the TI-Boy alpha (http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/419/41990.html) and see if it errors out :P
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thepenguin77 and dr dnr both wrrote a program to teas for extra ram. Id try to find the link for ya,but im browsing on my phone from work. Its a bit cumbersome. :(. I'll see if i can find the threads and link to them when i get home, if you haven't found them by then.
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Looks like the spell checker's having fun there XD
Anyway found one, made by..calcdude :P Haven't tested it but looks like there weren't any problems with the ~150 people that did. There's also one by brandonw a few posts down.
http://ourl.ca/1129/46986
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Awesome thanks, i'll test it out later tonight :)