Author Topic: General Discussion  (Read 77261 times)

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Offline meishe91

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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #105 on: August 06, 2010, 02:38:36 pm »
Well, if it's a real z80, then we should, maybe with really minor changes.

remember though, all of the asm written will be for a monochrome 96x64 (probably wrong :P) resolution and we will want to rewrite most stuff for the better specs.   ;) direct portability would be nice, of course.

Someone could possibly create a program or something that emulates the specs of a TI-8x calculator.
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Offline calc84maniac

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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #106 on: August 06, 2010, 02:39:32 pm »
Well, if it's a real z80, then we should, maybe with really minor changes.

remember though, all of the asm written will be for a monochrome 96x64 (probably wrong :P) resolution and we will want to rewrite most stuff for the better specs.   ;) direct portability would be nice, of course.
It's actually an upgraded Z80 with awesome new features (and much faster speed). Like, it supports 24-bit memory addresses (it can access 16MB of memory without any bank switching) Of course, there is a Z80 mode that has full compatibility (with 16-bit addresses and such). I'm reading documentation right now, and it seems pretty nice.
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_player1537

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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #107 on: August 06, 2010, 02:39:52 pm »
True.  A full color screen would be amazing.  Even if its... idk like 15 colors *shrug* 255 would be better, but probably a lot more than its worth.

Offline willrandship

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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #108 on: August 06, 2010, 02:40:33 pm »
Easy (hardware-wise, not saying anything about writing the code), for ARM anyways. I'm not sure about the z80, but underclocking could work pretty well.

Edit:ninja'd
« Last Edit: August 06, 2010, 02:41:18 pm by willrandship »

Offline meishe91

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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #109 on: August 06, 2010, 02:43:33 pm »
Color I think shouldn't be a huge worry right now. And if we do manage color then we really don't need that much. The more color there is the more complicated it will get. 4 bit color is more than enough, I think.
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_player1537

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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #110 on: August 06, 2010, 02:44:29 pm »
Black, red, blue, green?

Offline Happybobjr

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« Last Edit: August 06, 2010, 02:46:12 pm by happybobjr »
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_player1537

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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #112 on: August 06, 2010, 02:47:15 pm »
idk why, but it looks like that's more than 4 colors.  Besides that, that would be really good.  What's the resolution?

Offline Happybobjr

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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #113 on: August 06, 2010, 02:47:35 pm »
Color I think shouldn't be a huge worry right now. And if we do manage color then we really don't need that much. The more color there is the more complicated it will get. 4 bit color is more than enough, I think.

4 bit color
not 4 colors

this is 2bit color
= 4 colors.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2010, 02:48:24 pm by happybobjr »
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Offline meishe91

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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #114 on: August 06, 2010, 02:48:20 pm »
4 bit color is 16 colors. What you were saying with 256 colors is 8 bit color.
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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #115 on: August 06, 2010, 02:49:32 pm »
Woops, my brain doesn't seem to be working correctly today x.x  Sorry.

Offline Happybobjr

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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #116 on: August 06, 2010, 02:50:03 pm »
4 bit color is 16 colors. What you were saying with 256 colors is 8 bit color.
8 bit might be overdoing it for what we need
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Offline meishe91

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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #117 on: August 06, 2010, 02:50:44 pm »
Ya, that's why I was saying 4 bit is more than enough, I think.
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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #118 on: August 06, 2010, 02:51:40 pm »
Oh yeah, I do like 4 bit btw :D

Offline willrandship

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Re: Let's build our own calculator!
« Reply #119 on: August 06, 2010, 02:51:43 pm »
4 bit means 2^4 colors, or 16 colors. It was a standard for old computers, and viruses for windows sometimes force it into 4-bit color.

Color will really depend on the screen you choose, and the addressing capabilities of the processor to control it. high color depth on a low-res screen isn't hard for the processor, providing the screen does all the work (think like the nspire, with 16-level greyscale)

Color will be a design worry, not a programming worry, and not necessarily something we need to worry about yet.