It takes about the same amount of time as if you were to archive a program from the memory management window.  Similar to apps it does wear on the flash, but at least 8 times less wear with large programs than application compiling and you don't have to defragment each time you create a backup, only on the rare occasions when you're asked to garbage collect.

Another thing to note is that backups don't have be automatic.  You can manually create backup copies whenever you want by pressing 'B' in the compile menu in case you're concerned about running out of flash, wear on the flash, or the extra time it takes.  Its also nice if you have a lot of programs you want to backup without compiling them first.

In case anyone is wondering what's been going on recently with the lack of the promised Axe update last week, the main reason is the time I've been spending to get the automatic backups working.  I spent about 5 days writing a ton of extra code since the OS did not support the archiving of invisible programs.  After all that testing I finally had it all ready to be uploaded and I sent it to my calculator to do some last minute testing.  That's when it gave me an ERR: Undefined when trying to create a backup.  It turns out the trick I was using was no longer possible on OS 2.4x and so that really set me back.  The only way I saw I could get it done now was writing directly to the flash.  So I wrote routines for that.  Then I realized that not only do I have to write my own routine for that, I have to write my own symbol table searching, vat entry updater, and program creator routines since I can't use the OS's routines given that they no longer support the format.  It just got too crazy and I finally gave up.  So I now have to throw away about a weeks worth of code and start fresh.

The main reason I had to make the files invisible was to be 100% sure that important appvars do not get overwritten accidentally.  But I've though of a simpler way to do that now by checking if a non-backup file of the same name exists first and then refuse to backup the file until you manually delete it, that way you won't accidentally erase it.  But unfortunately, now backups will crowd the memory management list which I really didn't want, but I guess on the plus side you can erase the backups without having to go into the Axe app.

Anyway, the update should be ready now in less than 24 hours I hope.  The backup feature, when it was working on the older OS, is like a night-and-day difference in how you program.  I feel like I would never program without it now because its such a huge convenience.  Its definitely a reason to upgrade if you have an older version.  I fixed a lot of other little bugs too to make it more stable.

USB linking is incredibly complicated.  I don't think its ever been done before in a game, the routines would be MASSIVE and the speed would be way too slow for anything realtime.  It doesn't help either that TI never documented any of the USB functionality so all the information we currently have on it is from hackers and disassembly.

They have that in C++ too since you can define variables as "const" and then you have a static variable

Thanks ztrumpet!  I'm working on fixing them right now.  Those results are kind of interesting.  Seems the 83+ never failed as the receiver and most of the errors were bit shifts.  That probably means the receiving routine is a little too fast.

UC Berkeley is a good choice, that's where I'm going.  It's a public school (usually considered the best in the country) so its probably less expensive than a private school even if you're from out of state.  It's also consistently in the top 5 schools in the world for computer science and engineering.  It's hard to get in though, you pretty much need almost strait A's.  This is my first semester there so I haven't actually started yet, but from what I've seen so far, their college of engineering is really nice.

Yeah, the regular talks will be an hour or two earlier, this was just a spur of the moment thing because I'm planning to release 0.4.2 tomorrow and I wanted to have this before then so I'd have time to change things.  But assuming its some time in the evening, what I'm more concerned about is the day of the week.  Are there any days I should *not* make it?  Are weekdays better than weekends or vise-versa?