Omnimaga
Calculator Community => Other Calculators => Topic started by: Snake X on March 01, 2011, 04:53:48 pm
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This morning, I went into our tech office and lo and behold was the employee. Before I begin, thank you for all your help in making this possible. Let's begin!
me: Hello, I heard you work with TI, is this true?
Person: No, I don't work with TI, but I work very close to them. I freelance for them and do stuff with them.
Me: OK, in that case, may I see the new calculator?
[Person pulls out new Nspire CX out of his gym bag, still bubble wrapped]
Me: ah very nice. Very nice indeed [explores it a little, goes to documents folder first thing but finding many documents so I exited]. Now does this have any new programming capabilities?
Person: No, it does not any have new capabilities from the current generation Nspire, it only has basic programming functions to solve mathematical equations. There are about only 300 people that work in the educational division of TI, so they were trying to mainly push out the 3D capabilities and the color screen mostly, so the programming was not changed in the new calculator. Sorry about that.
Me: Do you think that there will be any plans for future calculator programming on these?
Person: No, there are no plans to give any additional programming functions as far as I am aware. And I know there are many people that care about gaming and that stuff...
Me: definitely
Person: ...but really the teachers don't really care about programming capabilities. TI is always trying to improve their calculators, but this one will mainly focus on graphing and color. Perhaps next time..
Me: So the teachers are the ones that are influencing the direction of this?
Person: Yeah. The main thing is getting what the teachers want and that is our main business.
Me: OK, well in the future, will the support for these calculators (I point to a crate of Nspire CAS's)?
Person: Definitely, we won't be dropping support for these calculators since we are making OS 3.0 and they will be compatible with them.
Me: OK, thanks for that then, I guess I should be leaving now..
Person: OK, thanks! Have a good day!
Me: Wait, one more question.
Person: yeah?
Me: When will these things be released?
Person: In April.
Me: Do you know what day?
Person: No, all I know is that it's in April, and even then, that’s just my estimation.
Me: OK, thanks! See ya.
Conclusion: The Nspire CX will NOT be supporting new gaming capabilities and teachers ARE their business, so they don't care about us. The buttons were NOT rubber if anyone is wondering. I only looked at the home screen, moved the cursor a bit, glanced at the documents folder and that was about it. Sorry, I did not ask about the OS 2.53MP. The calculators were noticeably thinner than the current ones and look just like the pictures. The estimated time of arrival is in April.
EDIT: Corrected spelling mistakes at request.
edit edit: oohh icwutudidtharquerty.55 :P
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ok, Ndless all the way then, I really hope the ndless team can think of a way to fix this CX problem :/
sounds like a crappy TI Prizm imo...
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Nice info there :thumbsup:
Too bad you didn't ask about the sdk, though.
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yeah sorry about that.. but I did try to get the main points
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hmm, you forgot to ask about the TI-84 pocket, I just remembered D: is he still going to be there at all?
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He works for the school so pretty much..
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oh goodie, be sure to ask then :D
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Nice sort-of interview. :D
I guess that confirms even more that the new calc won't have any improvements on programming capabilities and that they mostly care about teachers, not programmers. Our only solution then will be Ndless.
In other words, this will be like a super-high-powered version of the Prizm hardware, but still as crippled as the old Nspire in terms of programming and still as hard to get used to.
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I think the lack still of programming on the nspire cx is a bad move by TI. Maybe they dont have to put an actual language on there, but they really should just leave the nspire open for c and asm programs and let the community build the support. instead they block it. and teachers even could benefit with c and asm programs as it allows for full use of the calculators potential, creating the ability to be more interactive with colors and graphics. as long as they do not purposefully block c and asm abilities (well attempt too) the community at least can build support.
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Yeah, what you said. I'm sure the community will win. However they don't help their reputation in the calc community. That said, sadly, the programmer community is only a small fraction of their userbase, so the only way to hurt their sales much would be that most programmers develop good games for the Prizm instead of the Nspire CX.
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Well i dont think the prizm has the hardware to back up powerful enough programs even with a lot of community support. There is someone no matter what TI does that will crack eventually whatever protection they put on there. they should just cut their losses and time and just allow c and asm support
and the prizm just isnt high powered enough in my opinion. the nspire cas blows it out of the water and now with the cx, I am not sure how casio can still compete with the Nspire. I dont think the programmers base though will move to the prizm, the hacks on the nspire now are better than most if not all the games developers have put on the prizms... I think either way TI wins, at least in the US
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Well i dont think the prizm has the hardware to back up powerful enough programs even with a lot of community support. There is someone no matter what TI does that will crack eventually whatever protection they put on there. they should just cut their losses and time and just allow c and asm support
and the prizm just isnt high powered enough in my opinion. the nspire cas blows it out of the water and now with the cx, I am not sure how casio can still compete with the Nspire. I dont think the programmers base though will move to the prizm, the hacks on the nspire now are better than most if not all the games developers have put on the prizms... I think either way TI wins, at least in the US
There are a couple of things to keep in mind first. The Casio Prizm has only been out for just over 2 months now. The nspire though came out in 2007. Before Prizm programmers like me could even get started writing games we had to first document the hardware and the OS. Now we have documented many of the system calls and even have a C enviroment up now. With the hardware the CX has an upperhand on the memory I must admit, but speed is actually more equal than you think. The arm proc the nspire uses has a higher frequency than the Prizm's SH3, but the clock cycles for instructions are greater which causes slow downs.
btw: it seems like you are new here. welcome on the forums. ;D
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Well i dont think the prizm has the hardware to back up powerful enough programs even with a lot of community support. There is someone no matter what TI does that will crack eventually whatever protection they put on there. they should just cut their losses and time and just allow c and asm support
The hardware isn't powerful enough? I think you quite underestimate how powerful modern processors are. Look at the TI-83+ Series. That's a 6 MHz processor and it can run some incredibly impressive games. The Prizm, however, can overclock its processor to faster than the Nspire's normal running speed. So, to say it's not powerful enough is to say that the Nspire isn't powerful enough either. Yet I can pretty much guarantee you that the CAS on the Nspire isn't running on more than 90 MHz.
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why thank you!
and this is true but the prizm is gonna have a hard time competing with the cx's wi-fi and the ability to easily share files. but yes I imagine after some time the prizm will definitely have more support. casio really just needs a powerful calculator, with a cas, to be able to really compete with the nspire. cause i am in calculus and the prizm's functions do not do it for me, it just isn't powerful enough like the nspire cas. so maybe it'll be able to compete after tweaking and upgrades but the cx seems to be a real nail in the coffin , excluding programming support.
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I doubt the wi-fi will be popular enough. Sorry, but not a lot of students will spend $5000 on a Wi-fi device.
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is it really that much? though i imagine they will come out with a more personal wifi attachment eventually. and the nspire can be overclocked just as easily... and the rendering memory on the nspire is a lot higher than the prizm. the nspire can handle gbc games, which is pretty impressive. i dont think the prizm could handle that
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Who says we need support from Casio. All they did was make the calc. We though will write all the games, functions, routines, and an sdk. We certainly don't need Casio to provide all this support for us, we will just do it ourselves. And if you really need calculus I will code an app just for you ;)
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I doubt it, but I know the 10-calc Nspire navigator thing costed in the high thousands. Judging by the price, I bet the single calc one was in the hundreds.
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And about the what the Prizm can handle. We are only limited in what we are able to code. If I want to code a gbc emulator then I will make one and I'm sure the Prizm could easily handle that.
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I doubt it, but I know the 10-calc Nspire navigator thing costed in the high thousands. Judging by the price, I bet the single calc one was in the hundreds.
thing is, how many people besides programmers even really USE the Nspire? I can only think of one or two in my 2000 student high school. And that's pushing the numbers, guessing there might be more than the one I know.
Thing is, the Nspire is the teacher's dream, but what school is gonna pay $500 more for a 30 pack of Nspires when they can save money on a 30 pack of 83+'s or even 89's? I doubt TI made much money at ALL with the original Nspire series, and lost even more with the touchpad.
With that negativity being said, how many students even know how to download games anyways? when I described how to use TI-Connect, everyone gets confused after I say 'plug in a cable'. And Ndless is 10x harder to install/use, there's a lot of people who join omnimaga every day just to ask a question on how to install it.
So, who cares if we have support from teachers? Or interest for students? WE can be the ones to enjoy and cherish the fun experience of programming on the Prizm or CX (though the prizm, z80man makes it sound quite convincing that C development will be possible soon for that platform) while THEY can be the morons left in the dust.
Programming power!
(http://cdn1.newsone.com/files/2010/07/black-power.jpg)
EDIT: okay that last thing was a bad joke but it was funny :P
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Yeah I bet the Nspire userbase is much smaller than the 84+ one. After all, when it initially came out, it sold so poorly that TI dropped prices a lot the year after. For a year, I could buy a TI-Nspire for cheaper than a TI-84+ Silver Edition, even if the TI-Nspire included an actual TI-84+ Silver Edition keypad.
Anyway Ashbad could you check your PMs? :/
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I did ;)
sorry I couldn't respond, had a 103 degree temperature all week, was asleep in bed most of the time, couldn't check the forums :(
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Ok I see, I get worried because you rarely answers my PMs and 3 weeks ago you didn't do 103 temperature I guess. Sorry to hear you're sick, tho. X.x
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The arm proc the nspire uses has a higher frequency than the Prizm's SH3, but the clock cycles for instructions are greater which causes slow downs.
How so? Most instructions on both are 1 cycle each. Of course there are exceptions, but with those, both processor types have their own advantages and disadvantages. One thing about the ARM processor, though, is that its instructions usually have much more customization (including conditional execution, heck yes)
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Wait. So are CX's processor good enought to run gba games, or is it just not yet?
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Nice reporting, Snake. Thanks! ;D
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Wait. So are CX's processor good enought to run gba games, or is it just not yet?
We don't know yet. GBA emulation was attempted on the regular 150 MHz Nspire (max speed), and it only supported a few games and few special effects, in addition to running at slow speed. It was when the coder was still pretty new to ARM ASM, though, and if the new Nspire got a more powerful CPU, then maybe it could be possible.
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So, who cares if we have support from teachers? Or interest for students? WE can be the ones to enjoy and cherish the fun experience of programming on the Prizm or CX (though the prizm, z80man makes it sound quite convincing that C development will be possible soon for that platform) while THEY can be the morons left in the dust.
We've had C programming on the Prizm for about a week :P
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It is not public yet, right, Qwerty? (How to program in C for it) I know how, though. And yeah it's awesome we got the Prizm hacked so fast compared to the old Nspire.
On a side note, for the sake of our non-english native users, would a mod/staff/Snake_X mind correcting some of the spelling mistakes in the first post so it is easier to read, especially that it contains some useful info? It will also avoid possible misinterpretations.
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So, who cares if we have support from teachers? Or interest for students? WE can be the ones to enjoy and cherish the fun experience of programming on the Prizm or CX (though the prizm, z80man makes it sound quite convincing that C development will be possible soon for that platform) while THEY can be the morons left in the dust.
We've had C programming on the Prizm for about a week :P
Tell me when it is finished, I'll buy a prism and make a language similar to Java and a virtual machine to go with it ;)
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I'll do it.
@Ashbad. Java's been ported [to the processor] too.
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wait, java is in prizm? O.O
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Only to the processor. It's not on the hardware [yet].
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I'll do it.
@Ashbad. Java's been ported [to the processor] too.
Really? In what form? Normal, a lightweight/microedition, mobile edition, jazelle?
if so, even better >:D just tell me when it's somewhat all done (like some actual libraries, just a few like the ability to draw bytes to the screen buffer, and I can make some nice graphic libs)
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The version I'm aware of is called Kaffe. It's not the Sun Microsystems Java, but it should be close enough for most purposes.
That said, give Java a few years. I have some stuff I want to release for beta testing first ;)
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Wow, does it means we can already code in Java on the thing? I think we definitively need to expand the download section to Casio calcs or make a topic in the Prizm section listing every Prizm development tools and add-ins so far. It would be greatly useful.
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y'hello;
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=744888
EDIT: DJ, IDK, kaffe looks okay from what I just looked up, but I have no idea how how lightweight it is atm.
@Qwerty: is it already on the prizm, like jazelle was discovered on the Nspire (but still not used yet)?
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Fixed the first post.
As for Prizm-Java, it has *not* been ported to the Prizm hardware yet, nor is it likely to happen anytime soon unless someone else feels like doing it. I highly doubt the virtual machine will run unaltered due to the slightly customized configuration of the PCB and the non-standard memory mappings/OS style. Porting the Kaffe JVM, while probably easier than writing it from scratch, is still a monumental task. This is why I haven't made many mentions of it before. It's nowhere near ready for use.
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then, tell me when C is ready and I'll write a VM for a Java-like language >:D
EDIT: and a compiler too >.O
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Fixed the first post.
As for Prizm-Java, it has *not* been ported to the Prizm hardware yet, nor is it likely to happen anytime soon unless someone else feels like doing it. I highly doubt the virtual machine will run unaltered due to the slightly customized configuration of the PCB and the non-standard memory mappings/OS style. Porting the Kaffe JVM, while probably easier than writing it from scratch, is still a monumental task. This is why I haven't made many mentions of it before. It's nowhere near ready for use.
Thanks for the clarification and the post fixing. I think the priority now is really allowing people to program in SH3/C without too much hassle, such as a SDK, and continue examinating the OS and document it.
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Ashbad, talk to Kristaba, because he's compiled working C programs for the Prizm before and has the appropriate header files. I'm personally mystified by all of that compiler stuff.
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Qwerty: okay, I'll work out some syntax tonight, (since I'm an innovater it'll look nothing like JAva but compile and act almost identical >:D) and start planning some technical features of the VM tomorrow. I doubt I will have the resources to do this for a while, but I might as well start whilst I am still young and a virgin (unless if Im not and that crazy dream was real)
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Well i dont think the prizm has the hardware to back up powerful enough programs even with a lot of community support. There is someone no matter what TI does that will crack eventually whatever protection they put on there. they should just cut their losses and time and just allow c and asm support
and the prizm just isnt high powered enough in my opinion. the nspire cas blows it out of the water and now with the cx, I am not sure how casio can still compete with the Nspire. I dont think the programmers base though will move to the prizm, the hacks on the nspire now are better than most if not all the games developers have put on the prizms... I think either way TI wins, at least in the US
I'd have to disagree. Compared to any of TI's other calculators the Prizm has plenty of power and memory. Great games and utilities have been produced on the underpowered Z80's for over a decade now, the Prizm will be fine. :) Not to mention that it has a much better display than any of the grayscale Nspires, I'm unsure about the new CX Nspires as details are limited for the moment.
Also, the Nspire was developed based on what educators wanted. A math machine. They got tired of students being able to work around cheating on test and using the calcs for gaming and whatnot. Not that it stopped the community from opening them to dev mind you.
Also, since you're new; Welcome! =) If you haven't already you can go make a topic in the <a href="http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?board=10.0">introuduce yourself</a> section.
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It's great to see progress on the Prizm, good luck to all of you!
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The Prizm can be overclocked to 118 MHz, from what I heard. Aside from the low RAM, I think it almost matches the Nspire. On the Nspire we got 2x more archive, but only half can be used, so we end up with the same amount as the Prizm, if not less. I am sure people could get around the RAM limitation. Plus there are most likely hidden RAM areas we can use to store temporary data..
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Look at it this way: Thanks to TI's asinine calculator programmers, we've had to become smarter, more creative, better, etc. to get what we want.
And OMG, I just referred to myself as a part of the Omnimaga community for the first time I've been here....
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Good job. You should be proud of yourself ;D
BTW If OS 3.0 comes out, will the greyscale nspire be able to use 3d graphing?
and if greyscale nspire can be upgraded to OS 3.0, this means that OS 3.0 might be not so big at all.(This leaves about 80~90mb on CX?)
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@holmes: Congratz, you are becoming one of us! Muahaha!/me laughs maniacally
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Person: No, there are no plans to give any additional programming functions as far as I am aware. And I know there are many people that care about gaming and that stuff...
Me: definitely
Of course.
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BTW If OS 3.0 comes out, will the greyscale nspire be able to use 3d graphing?
yeah, the current nspire will be able to do 3d graphing with os 3.0, hold on for a link & pic though
edit: from http://education.ti.com/calculators/products/US/os-update/ this is what it would look like:
(http://i54.tinypic.com/nz135y.png)