Author Topic: More RAM?  (Read 6491 times)

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Offline JoeyBelgier

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More RAM?
« on: July 29, 2009, 11:18:57 am »
"The TI-84 Plus Silver Edition was released in 2004 as an upgrade to the TI-83 Plus Silver Edition. Like the TI-83 Plus Silver Edition, it features a 15 MHz Zilog Z80 processor, 24 kB user available RAM (the actual chip is 128 kB, but TI has yet to code support for the entire RAM into an OS), and 1.5 MB Flash ROM. Like the standard TI-84 Plus, the Silver Edition includes a built-in USB port, a built-in clock, and assembly support. It uses 4 AAA batteries and a backup button cell battery. If you take out the batteries while the TI-84 is running, it clears the RAM. TI offers yellow versions of this calculator to schools. Owners can buy other interchangeable colored face-plates and slide-cases online. A kickstand-style slide case and other accessories are also available. The TI-84 Plus Silver Edition comes preloaded with a variety of programs, including App4Math, an interface upgrade that allows students to input math problems exactly as they appear in the textbook."

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-84_Plus_series

did anyone ever managed to use this/figured out how you could use this?
Or is the chance we'll ever be able to use it 0,0% .

Offline Geekboy1011

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Re: More RAM?
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2009, 11:25:35 am »
slim to none as it would be a completely difertnt os and would have bad support for games that have perfectly timed grayscale and stuff :)

Offline JoeyBelgier

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Re: More RAM?
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2009, 11:56:59 am »
crap

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: More RAM?
« Reply #3 on: July 29, 2009, 12:10:22 pm »
Well if you check Ticalc.org news, BrandonW has released something allowing users to send a 3rd party OS (not made by TI) to their calculator or something like that and he's one of the few people at the moment to be writing a new OS that will allow the usage of most of that 128 KB of RAM. IIRC one of the OSes is not really a full OS but more a patch for TI-OS (since it would be illegal to release an OS using TI code) that would allow the usage of all this hidden RAM.

I think there was a (buggy?) program patching the calc so it can run archived programs directly from archive, too, but I don't exactly remember.

Offline Iambian

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Re: More RAM?
« Reply #4 on: July 29, 2009, 12:45:09 pm »
If you knew ASM and had a project that needed it, you could write a program that would take advantage of all that RAM. But I suppose that's not the question being asked.

One of the problems of a new OS that claims compatibility with old programs and yet has support for that extra RAM would have problems choking down projects that use that extra RAM as saferam. A big offender? Omnicalc and its RAM recovery function.

As far as ASM programs go, you just extend the mapping for known RAM pages to map all 8 of these pages.
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Offline noahbaby94

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Re: More RAM?
« Reply #5 on: July 29, 2009, 12:49:19 pm »
Now this probably is just to simple-minded of me but is it possible to use the saferam to store extra data? Like programs strings ect for quicker access.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: More RAM?
« Reply #6 on: July 29, 2009, 01:03:07 pm »
plus if it was a totally new OS, it would no longer run old BASIC programs, not to mention, would the new OS even includes a on-calc BASIC-like language at all? Plus, ASM programs using TI routines wouldn't work anymore either. If switching back and forth from old to new OS is made easier, it might not split the community too much, though.

I like Noahbaby idea, though. Maybe for example, future BASIC Builder versions could support archived programs but instead of archiving them when decompressing them when running the game app, they would be loaded in the hidden RAM on 15 MHz models and it would allow more games to be compressed with BasicBuilder instead of just the ones using no archive and just RAM. The downside would be that they would become SE-only, but many large hybrid/basic games are alerady SE-only, anyway

Offline necro

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Re: More RAM?
« Reply #7 on: July 29, 2009, 03:31:14 pm »
Why didn't ti make all (or at least most, if the os needs some) of the ram available?
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Offline Geekboy1011

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Re: More RAM?
« Reply #8 on: July 29, 2009, 03:41:17 pm »
my guess is lazzyness of the coders

Offline calc84maniac

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Re: More RAM?
« Reply #9 on: July 29, 2009, 04:07:00 pm »
I'm pretty sure it just came with the new Silver Edition setup - but they didn't want to change the OS (and destroy compatibility!).
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: More RAM?
« Reply #10 on: July 29, 2009, 04:29:54 pm »
Maybe they wanted to add new stuff in future OSes, but finally didn't. What would suck is if someone like Brandon decided to release a new OS taking advantage of that RAM then 1 year later TI released a new line of TI-84+ that got rid of that 128 KB additional RAM or most of it x.x

Offline JoeyBelgier

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Re: More RAM?
« Reply #11 on: July 29, 2009, 04:31:52 pm »
they're probably too lame to take it out
it's not like it costs THEM a lot

Offline Iambian

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Re: More RAM?
« Reply #12 on: July 29, 2009, 05:35:04 pm »
It would probably cost them more to change the assembly to remove that extra RAM, since it's all on the same chip as the microprocessor and just about everything else except Flash.

If it costs them more money than they need, they won't do it. Simple as that.
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