Therefore, anyone on the hardware team should write up a *full* spec, including ports and everything, and post it.  Then, we can nitpick at it until it is usable, and I can make an emulator.  Let's get this show on the road, folks!

I'll work on that. But I'll leave out all the [opional] peripherals!

Quote from: SirCmpwn on August 08, 2010, 04:41:49 pm

How about Mosaic for the harder language?  z80 assembly is pretty straightforward in terms of support   And Mosaic is already planned on being bundled in KOS.

This isn't KOS, this is OTZ80. I doubt Mosaic supports eZ80 anyway

True but KOS is very likely to be implented into this system though...Altough I still personally prefer to see a whole new OS for it (which can also be KOS but is specifically written for the eZ80 to take full advantage of speed increases and new commands)

I suggest making two languages, the easy one, basic should be interpreted. The harder one should be compiled. We could make some sort C-like language on it where every variable needs to be declared (I suggest any variable may be max. 8 char long?). I do think the basic version should be like Visual-Basic. Easy to use.

I do think having similarities is good but there may be some extra's to it. I'd love to develop a whole new language which takes the best of both worlds, the speed (or near it) of assembly yet the ease of use of basic. I am not talking about something Axe like hear because personally I don't find Axe that easy to use, especially because all the similar tokens confuse me. I suggest delivering this second language with a on-calc SDK and Compiler (all in one) as a external download. This so that newbs can't damage their calculator by playing around with the language (if it were pre-installed).

I'd say for the Advanced level (which i will from now on refer to as AOT: Advanced OmniTech) language to support a difference between data types to save space. This in contradiction to the Basic language which I suggest can have 8 char length varaibles that can be a string or a matrix or anything else just by assigning values like so:

MyVar = "ABCD"
MyVar = 10
MyVar = [[1,2][3,4]]

This does cause gaps in memory filled with garbage because you switch between types but I think it is easy. A other way would be doing a prefix like so:

sMyVar = "ABCD"
rMyVar = 10
mMyVar = [[1,2][3,4]]

The prefix doesn't count as character in the variables name. The AOT will (in my idea of it) declare variables like so:

New String MyVar = "ABCD"

or:

New String MyVar;
Myvar = "ABCD"

Aot will see the difference between Shorts, Doubles, Int's and Reals (and floats) as long as the type is declared (which is a must). For a Short it will reserve less space in memory so a advanced programmer can declare the types he needs.

Ok here I think is some keydifferences between Ti-Basic and OTBasic
First off all since there is more space we can use more descriptive tokens then par example: expr(). Secondly since the screen will hopefully be bigger there isn't a problem in making tokens longer in terms of displaying them.

definetely make indents for loops, very useful when young programmers get into more advanced PC languages, if they used OTB before (and they probaly will) then the gap between these languages would be smaller.

= assigns, no more sto token. This means assignments can be done in strings. Which means You can do subprograms in strings.

Custom named vars! Hopefully >5 chars long. Most likely with a pre- or suffix to define its type (int, real, mtrx, string etc)though but we will have to see about that later. This allows to create manual vars so different programs won't overwrite your variables. This does take up space but with a simple new command:
UndeclareYou can remove the vars you don't need to be saved and keep the ones that say, store level/player data. So you could do:
Undeclare Myvar1, Myvar2, Myvar3or:
Undeclare All()The parenthesis behind All could then contain nothing which litteraly deletes all declared vars or it could contain a type as, int, string, mtrx, real.
Undeclare All(int)This undeclares/ removes all vars of the type integer

Edit: Here are some more thoughts about AOT (not OTBasic as the above) syntax

Operators:

= is the assignment operator
== is the equal operator
/= (i can't do the non-equal sign here) is the non-equal operator
+ is plus
- is negative (I don't know if we need to make a distinction between - and (-) as the Ti calc does but I assume not)
* is multiply
/ is division
: is a logical and so you could have If A:B=1 (which tests if a=1 and b=1)
| is a logical or so you could have If A|B=1 (which tests if a=1 or b=1)
++ Increment with one stores to itself
-- decrement with one stores to itself
+= Increment with one assign to a new varaible or itself (which would be rather stupid considering the availability of ++ and --)
-= Decrement with one assign to a new varaible or itself (which would be rather stupid considering the availability of ++ and --)

IO:

Print [text | string | variable],[text | string | variable], [etc..] print a text, string or variable or a combination of those at the current cursorposition
Write X-location, Y-location, [text | string | var], [text | string | var], [text | string | var] , [etc] print a text, string or variable or a combination of those at the specified x and y position
Mprint [equation] writes out the specified eqaution in a pretty-print style.

Well im assuming the first designs will be on a breadboard? .

Partly maybe...I believe we are opting for a devboard, at least for the ARM version. I think with BenRyves's help we can do the eZ80 version without a devboard. I do ahve some breadboards and quite some components too though so I can do some testing if needed. I think I could buy a eZ80 as well, albeit I am not sure if my local electronics shop has it...

I first want to see a structured plan of attack. Then we can start prototyping.

Yeah, plus if it's on the side of the device, it could easily be brushed against and users would loose all their valuable data.

You mean the power swithc? That is why I choose a slide switch, the one that has pretty "heavy" resistance and needs to click, if you keep it in a bag or pocket it can not possibly turn off with that sort of switch. Just my (humble) opinion.

I just saw it...

I was ultra ninja'd

Yeah, personally, I'm for making a working version right now.  Maybe start with the z80, since more people know about it.

Agreed. I'll stop designing it was just mocking-up. Let's all move to the hardware section so we can decide on that and get rolling...