Omnimaga

Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: DJ Omnimaga on December 04, 2010, 02:54:31 pm

Title: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 04, 2010, 02:54:31 pm
TI-Nspire OS 1.7 users, rejoice: Ndless is now officially available for it, as version 1.7! Although versions of it were already available for a while in source code format (meaning that you had to compile it yourself), for people who wanted to develop for it, but now it is available in an official release in binary, ready to use for everyone, both on Ticalc.org and Omnimaga archives (http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=598)!

Besides OS 1.7 compatibility, this version is also transferable from a calculator to another. Make sure to read the instructions before attempting any transfer or installing, though.

Ndless combines a resident program and utilities to open the TI-Nspire to third-party C and assembly development.

Ndless 1.7 (http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=598) is the latest stable release compatible with OS 1.7. This version is currently not compatible with the TI-Nspire Touchpad.
This topic is dedicated to discussions about this version.

Possible enhancements and known issues are available on the tracker (http://www.unsads.com/projects/nsptools).

You may browse the Development resources (http://hackspire.unsads.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page#Development_resources) on Hackspire to start your own programs.

To build and hack into Ndless 1.7, follow src/doc/Ndess-Development.txt.

Ndless v1.1.1 (http://bytecode.fr/ti-nspire/ndless-v1.1.1.zip) is still available but support is dicontinued.



Issues to be confirmed:

If you happen to come across one of them, please report it.

  • (apcalc) Installation lost when turning the TI-Nspire on:
    Even though the calculator was not reset.  Reinstalling Ndless fixes this.

  • (critor) Reboot when turning the TI-Nspire on:
    'particles' was run before turning it off.



Your help is needed:

- Post any bug report (http://www.unsads.com/projects/nsptools), source-level if possible
- Help us to extend (http://ourl.ca/7106/126013) the list of supported syscalls (http://hackspire.unsads.com/wiki/index.php/Syscalls)
- Any details, diagnostic or patch which would help fixing the defects identified (http://www.unsads.com/projects/nsptools/report/1) is extremely valuable

Changes in Ndless 1.7 over last version (http://hackspire.unsads.com/wiki/index.php/Ndless)

Ndless 1.7 Discussion topic (http://ourl.ca/7106)

Hopefully Ndless 2.0 will be available soon as well, solving the issue for most Touchpad users. Discussion about it will happen in the Ndless 2.0 topic (http://ourl.ca/8160).
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: Munchor on December 04, 2010, 02:56:19 pm
This is a great step in NSpire, when 2.0 comes all Touchpad Users will be able to play Super Mario.

We need to warn Nspire users not to update their OSs too, I'm sure Texas will release a 'great! full of new features' OS in two days -.-
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: qazz42 on December 04, 2010, 02:57:00 pm
yesss, time for some gamboy games!
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: Munchor on December 04, 2010, 03:50:11 pm
yesss, time for some gamboy games!

This will make the TI NSpire community much more active, so I believe new emulators will come out. So many GBA Emulators you can't even decide which one to use hahaha
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 04, 2010, 07:54:20 pm
Yeah I believe that a lot of people who couldn't use OS 1.1 before will now come back or join, since 1.7 is easier to find than 1.1 and doesn't have the power bug.

I wonder how many hours were spent on Ndless btw? There must have been A LOT considering it involved finding security exploits and stuff! :O
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: fb39ca4 on December 04, 2010, 08:06:38 pm
Installing it right now!
Here's (http://education.ti.com/calculators/downloads/US/Software/Detail?id=6633#) an OS 1.7 download link, courtesy of The Pirate Bay TI. ;D Maybe DJ, you could put it in the first post.
Now that 1.7 is official, I can start on a project I'd planned. :)
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 04, 2010, 08:09:14 pm
Woah they even listed it again??? Before, we had to guess the direct file link to download it...

On an off-topic note, weren't you working on a 3D maze program using Bwang's engine or was it someone else?
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: calc84maniac on December 04, 2010, 08:16:15 pm
Woah they even listed it again??? Before, we had to guess the direct file link to download it...

On an off-topic note, weren't you working on a 3D maze program using Bwang's engine or was it someone else?
I still think the direct link is required, as this is the only page accessible from the rest of the site: http://education.ti.com/calculators/downloads/US/Software/Detail?id=6766# (http://education.ti.com/calculators/downloads/US/Software/Detail?id=6766#)
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: fb39ca4 on December 04, 2010, 08:27:07 pm
Woah they even listed it again??? Before, we had to guess the direct file link to download it...

On an off-topic note, weren't you working on a 3D maze program using Bwang's engine or was it someone else?
Yeah, that was me. But I had problems with global variables. I guess I could restart that, as I think global variable support was supposed to be added in this version of ndless.

And the link I got was by googling: site:eduacation.ti.com operating system 1.7
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 04, 2010, 08:40:07 pm
I see. Well I hope you eventually pick it up again. :)
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: qazz42 on December 04, 2010, 10:25:22 pm
hmm, I am curious if he losing-installation-after-reboot thing still happens `-` (no reboots from my end though :D)
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: calc84maniac on December 04, 2010, 11:11:21 pm
hmm, I am curious if he losing-installation-after-reboot thing still happens `-` (no reboots from my end though :D)
Well, yes, but it's not a huge hassle to install once a reboot happens, since it doesn't need to be plugged into a computer anymore.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 05, 2010, 02:23:29 am
Question, what does happen when you attempt at running an ASM/C document when Ndless is uninstalled? Does it crashes or something?
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: ExtendeD on December 05, 2010, 04:34:23 am
DJ: there's an OS popup telling the format is not recognized.

hmm, I am curious if he losing-installation-after-reboot thing still happens `-` (no reboots from my end though :D)
Well, yes, but it's not a huge hassle to install once a reboot happens, since it doesn't need to be plugged into a computer anymore.

But it shouldn't happen, please tell me when you see it, I'd like to understand how frequent it is.
Forget this, I thought there was unexepected reboots.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 05, 2010, 05:00:05 am
I think I'll try tomorrow. Is the reboot that occurs after pulling a battery the exact same as when returning from hibernation, by the way?
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: bwang on December 05, 2010, 02:00:58 pm
YES! It's finally here! Time to start Nspire coding again...
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: yunhua98 on December 05, 2010, 06:00:40 pm
yay!  thats good, glad you're back, btw
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: jnesselr on December 05, 2010, 06:03:11 pm
I really need to get a TI-nspire.  But, question, will Ndless every support touchpad?
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: fb39ca4 on December 05, 2010, 06:33:39 pm
When 2.0 comes out, it isn't a matter of ndless supporting it, but with people making their programs with the new keymap.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 05, 2010, 10:10:42 pm
YES! It's finally here! Time to start Nspire coding again...
Hey nice to see you around again. I was worried I would have to do staff updates soon due to you moving on or something. D: I hope you eventually pick up Nspire Raycaster and Floorcaster again. :)
I really need to get a TI-nspire.  But, question, will Ndless every support touchpad?
It will, once ExtendeD figured out some issues. The focus was put on making Ndless 1.0/1.1 stable, then focus on 1.7. Next will most likely be mostly 2.0, unless a lot of 1.7 bugs arise. Also, the new topic states the new Ndless will be compatible with OS 2.0 and 2.1 and Touchpad models.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: apcalc on December 05, 2010, 10:39:03 pm
YES! It's finally here! Time to start Nspire coding again...

Nice to see you back, bwang! :)
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: ExtendeD on December 06, 2010, 02:17:53 pm
bwang, bring us some new projects!

When 2.0 comes out, it isn't a matter of ndless supporting it, but with people making their programs with the new keymap.

I want it to be transparent to the developers with a simple re-build, if performance is not an issue for the program.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: TIfanx1999 on December 07, 2010, 02:32:07 am
I'm glad the new version of Ndless is out. Congrats to the Ndless team, and keep up the great work! =D
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: Yeong on December 07, 2010, 08:03:30 am
so do they fixed the installing errors?
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 07, 2010, 02:50:36 pm
Supposedly yes. I don't know about the reboot issues, though.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: Munchor on December 07, 2010, 04:02:00 pm
How's this being downloaded? Are people moving to OS 1.7+NDless1.7?
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: fb39ca4 on December 07, 2010, 04:42:18 pm
It seems so - ticalc.org has 238 downloads, and omnimaga, 25.

Also, I found an issue. The installer hangs when the calc is plugged into a computer.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 08, 2010, 12:50:18 am
Note that several Omni users who already had Ndless 1.7 beta/alpha but had no problems with it and aren't planning to code now might still have stayed with their current build, which is probably why the download count doesn't increase as fast as Ncubate. On ticalc.org, most visitors probably didn't know Ndless 1.7 even had a copy available for compiling for a while, unless they frequent Omni as well.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: kyllopardiun on December 22, 2010, 11:26:49 am
How do I clean the screen using ndless 1.7 [C]?

In unix it would be: system("clear")

or system("cls") for Win NT ...

Is something like that available to ndless?


EDIT:

I didn't find anything for scanf() or gets() too,
how can I use these functions?
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: ExtendeD on December 22, 2010, 11:56:07 am
Such commands to interact with the keyboard and screen don't exist and still need to be written.
Why not try to write them yourself, for example using bwang's text routines? It shouldn't be too difficult.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 22, 2010, 11:03:59 pm
On the topic of the screen, how much space does each pixel take in memory? Are they nibbles? (Since you got 16 level grayscale)
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: ExtendeD on December 23, 2010, 04:36:19 am
Each pixel is 4-bit long ( http://hackspire.unsads.com/wiki/index.php/Memory-mapped_I/O_ports#A4000000_-_Internal_SRAM ).
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 23, 2010, 12:21:07 pm
Cool, thanks for the info. I wasn't sure. I knew the screen had a 4 bit grayscale depth but I wasn't sure if each pixel or the screen had any other property or something else causing the screen memory to take more space. On some Casio monochrome calculators, picture data takes between 2 and 4 bit per pixel.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: calc84maniac on December 24, 2010, 08:19:42 pm
Cool, thanks for the info. I wasn't sure. I knew the screen had a 4 bit grayscale depth but I wasn't sure if each pixel or the screen had any other property or something else causing the screen memory to take more space. On some Casio monochrome calculators, picture data takes between 2 and 4 bit per pixel.
It actually is possible to change the data size with the Nspire's driver, though there are still 15 colors total available (in the 16-bit color values, only 4 bits are used). You can select 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 bits per pixel in the buffer. If the bits per pixel is less than 16, the pixel values are used to look up the 16-bit color values from an array contained within the driver. If the bits per pixel is 16, then the pixel values are used as color values (no array involved). Thus, if you want to reduce the buffer size, you can use 1-bit or 2-bit mode (which gives you 2 or 4 colors available)
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 26, 2010, 05:31:15 pm
Ah that's nice. :D
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: fb39ca4 on December 26, 2010, 08:31:21 pm
Though it would be unlikely you would need to do that, remember, the nspire has 32mb of RAM, for TI's bloated OS :P
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: critor on December 26, 2010, 08:36:52 pm
Though it would be unlikely you would need to do that, remember, the nspire has 32mb of RAM, for TI's bloated OS :P

If I am correct, 32Mb of ROM, and 16Mb of RAM.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: fb39ca4 on December 26, 2010, 09:00:11 pm
Nope, it's 32mb ram. I just checked hackspire.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: critor on December 26, 2010, 09:03:09 pm
Thanks.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: calc84maniac on December 26, 2010, 09:32:03 pm
Though it would be unlikely you would need to do that, remember, the nspire has 32mb of RAM, for TI's bloated OS :P
Yes, but smaller buffers can increase performance, even if only because the CPU only has 8KB of data cache. Not to mention, there is not as much data to process.
Title: Re: Ndless 1.7 officially released
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 27, 2010, 04:10:27 pm
Nope, it's 32mb ram. I just checked hackspire.
Yeah I think it's definitively 32 MB. If I remember the entire OS is copied into RAM on booting. If you had 16 MB OS 2.1 wouldn't even fit at all. O.O