Author Topic: Casio Prizm - What is it?  (Read 17926 times)

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Offline Munchor

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Casio Prizm - What is it?
« on: December 31, 2010, 06:29:33 am »
For any of you who have been wondering what the Prizm is all about, I gathered some information here.

The Casio Prizm is the latest Casio calculator and is one of the firsts, if not the first, full colour calculator. For us, programmers, these are good news since we can know code programs and games that are not MONO or Greyscale. This is Casio's actual information about the Prizm:

Quote from: Casio
PRIZM™ is revolutionary among graphing calculators with features that enhance users’ understanding of mathematics. With conventional graphing calculators, students learn by inputting equations to create graphs. PRIZM™ creates a whole new way to learn math by enabling students to experiment by creating their own graphs over pictures of real-life scenes, and then understand the functions from the graphs that they created on their own.

A while ago I said the PRIZM would be great for programmers. However, students and teachers can also benefit a lot from the implementation of colours in calculators. Why? In many, many ways such as graphing several functions and giving each one a specific colour to help us analyse it, or as Casio said, create graphs with backgrounds such as landscapes and buildings, to help us understand better the use of functions in real life.



A coloured calculator is also much easier to handle than greyscale calculators. It's much easier for human eyes to understand things if they are coloured. In fact, surveys have proofed that highlighted text is more easily memorized by our brain.


On the other hand, the PRIZM is not all about colours, there are many other impressive features implemented in this calculator.

Quote from: Casio
New color enhancements, images, Picture Plot technology - PRIZM must burn through batteries, right? Wrong! Despite all this powerful functionality, PRIZM uses less energy because of the ground-breaking display technology. It will perform perfectly for 140 hours before dry-cell batteries need to be replaced. You can also use rechargeable batteries, which will last for 85 hours.

Casio says that the PRIZM can be turned on for about 140 hours with dry-cell batteries! This is fantastic for a coloured calculator, which supposedly would have a much smaller battery life.

How many times have you wished that your calculator had more memory?

Quote from: Casio
The Casio fx-CG10/PRIZM has 16MB of flash memory, 10MB operational. For additional specification and how PRIZM relates to other Casio graphing calculators and competitive models, see the related comparison chart.

The Prizm has quite a lot of memory, compared with the TI-83+ series, but for a calculator with colours, which means pictures and maybe videos, I feel that it could have more memory.



And so I finish my comments on the new Prizm with a picture of its keyboard, which I think, could be more functional. Some may also agree with me that this calculator could use some more beauty. However, the cons of the Prizm are easily outweighed by the pros.

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #1 on: December 31, 2010, 08:32:43 pm »
It might be good to add technical specs too:

User available RAM: 61 KB
Flash ROM: 16 MB
Screen resolution: 216x384
Color display: 65536 colors (16 bits)
I/O Port
USB Port
Connection with PC: USB mass storage

Offline fb39ca4

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #2 on: January 01, 2011, 01:28:54 am »
CPU: SuperH >= 29mhz
(The older casios were clocked at 29)

Offline Munchor

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2011, 08:27:03 am »
Thank's for the extra information, I didn't know those, and wanted to know ;D

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2011, 10:11:05 pm »
CPU: SuperH >= 29mhz
(The older casios were clocked at 29)
The newer Flash ones, that is (9750GII, 9860G series and 9860GII). If I remember, older ones used a slower processor. I heard that the AFX 2.0 was clocked at 4 MHz in the past, but I'm not sure if it's true.

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #5 on: January 01, 2011, 10:26:46 pm »
You can underclock the SuperH processor as well  :P
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Offline z80man

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #6 on: January 02, 2011, 12:59:16 am »
You can underclock the SuperH processor as well  :P
According to the manufactuer the SuperH can clock as high as 148 Mhz.  :D

List of stuff I need to do before September:
1. Finish the Emulator of the Casio Prizm (in active development)
2. Finish the the SH3 asm IDE/assembler/linker program (in active development)
3. Create a partial Java virtual machine  for the Prizm (not started)
4. Create Axe for the Prizm with an Axe legacy mode (in planning phase)
5. Develop a large set of C and asm libraries for the Prizm (some progress)
6. Create an emulator of the 83+ for the Prizm (not started)
7. Create a well polished game that showcases the ability of the Casio Prizm (not started)

Offline Munchor

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #7 on: January 02, 2011, 06:43:05 am »
You can underclock the SuperH processor as well  :P
According to the manufactuer the SuperH can clock as high as 148 Mhz.  :D

;D Did you contact them? That looks great!

Offline JosJuice

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2011, 06:46:31 am »
From what I've read, it can go higher than 148.
« Last Edit: January 02, 2011, 06:52:10 am by JosJuice »

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #9 on: January 03, 2011, 08:30:20 pm »
174 I think. I wonder if those processors produces heat at high frequencies or if they're like ARM9 processors. This is a bit why I am a bit worried about what happens to the machine if the processor is running at 174 MHz for several minutes.

Offline Michael_Lee

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #10 on: January 03, 2011, 09:05:37 pm »
Whoa, wait.  174 mhz?

Does not my TI-84+SE run at a max speed of 15 mhz?
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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #11 on: January 03, 2011, 09:12:25 pm »
Well that's how fast the processor type can go, apparently. I'm not sure if the calc hardware supports that high speed, though. Hopefully it can eventually checked on real hardware (although I hope it won't cost someone's calc X.x)

Offline Munchor

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #12 on: January 06, 2011, 02:04:37 pm »
Well that's how fast the processor type can go, apparently. I'm not sure if the calc hardware supports that high speed, though. Hopefully it can eventually checked on real hardware (although I hope it won't cost someone's calc X.x)

Qwerty just told me that PRIZM Basic is quite slow, I mean, faster that 83+/84+ Basic, but still slow on loading images.

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #13 on: January 06, 2011, 02:06:06 pm »
Well that's how fast the processor type can go, apparently. I'm not sure if the calc hardware supports that high speed, though. Hopefully it can eventually checked on real hardware (although I hope it won't cost someone's calc X.x)

Qwerty just told me that PRIZM Basic is quite slow, I mean, faster that 83+/84+ Basic, but still slow on loading images.
I think we were talking about the speed of the processor, not the speed of Casio-BASIC... Overclocking would allow all of this to be faster.

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Re: Casio Prizm - What is it?
« Reply #14 on: January 06, 2011, 02:09:00 pm »
Well that's how fast the processor type can go, apparently. I'm not sure if the calc hardware supports that high speed, though. Hopefully it can eventually checked on real hardware (although I hope it won't cost someone's calc X.x)

Qwerty just told me that PRIZM Basic is quite slow, I mean, faster that 83+/84+ Basic, but still slow on loading images.
I think we were talking about the speed of the processor, not the speed of Casio-BASIC... Overclocking would allow all of this to be faster.

That's correct, also, I suppose Assembly will be much faster than Basic.