Unix-like operating system for the TI-89 and TI-92+ graphing calculators.

Unix-like operating system for the TI-89 and TI-92+ graphing calculators.(sourceforge.net)

61 points by KonradKlause 14 years ago | 22 comments

sciurus 14 years ago |

For reference, a TI-92+ has a 12 MHz Motorola MC68000 processor and 188 KB of RAM.

Someone 14 years ago | |

For reference, the PDP-7 that Unix originally was developed for topped at 64k 18 bit words, or 144 kB RAM. Cycle time was 1.75 microseconds, so clock speed was about 571 kHz. (http://www.soemtron.org/pdp7.html)

akshaykarthik 14 years ago |

It's really interesting how calculator technology has stagnated over the years. I'm in a BC Calc class now where we are still using 89s. My teacher is aware of the nspire calculators and he frequently uses WolframAlpha but hardware wise, he still teaches off of the 89.

fiatmoney 14 years ago | |

With straight calculators, I don't know if there's a whole lot better for them to get than the 89. For anything more advanced than the built in computer algebra system and BASIC can handle (which goes quite a way, the CAS is really pretty good), you'd likely want to do on a "real" computer anyway, strictly for interface (screen and keyboard) reasons.

tjoff 14 years ago | | |

While I agree that I've never really felt that limited by the 89 for something that I wanted to do on a calculator anyway, but the price is absolutely ridiculous. The prices on calculators have barely dropped anything the last 10 years (and the calculators themselves have barely adopted either, you still get 32 KB of ram on the lower end (that still cost > $100)) and if it weren't for schools requiring them I have a hard time seeing how they would survive.

For the same pricepoint you will pretty much be able to get an android tablet with many hundred megabytes of RAM and gigabytes of storage combined with WIFI, bluetooth etc. etc. But these devices will of course not be allowed on an exam.

Not saying that a regular calculator doesn't have advantages over a touch interface but damn are they overpriced and there sure are advantages to a tablet as well, being able to zoom a graph decently (fast) and having like a hundred times more real estate that you could easily copy+paste within etc.

Yes, I'd still want a real calculator but no, I would never buy one at the price point they sell today.

Zombieball 14 years ago | | |

Calculators can get / be WAY better than the TI-89. Look at the HP-50g for starters. (Insert TI vs. HP) / (Algebraic noation vs RPN) battle here

peter_l_downs 14 years ago | |

Lucky you! I'm the only one in my BC Calc class with an 89; everyone else has an 84, to which the teacher teaches.

ohgodthecat 14 years ago | | |

At least integration is easy to do on the 89, I wasn't taught it and had to figure out how to do integration for the calculator section of one of the AP exams (BC or AB) on a ti 86 as our teacher did not teach us how to use our calculators at all.

prezjordan 14 years ago |

Can someone PLEASE make an open-source calculator? It's disgusting that TI continues to sell 20 year old hardware at a 1000% markup.

paulhauggis 14 years ago | |

You can, but don't expect to be able to use it on any test in college, high school, or the SAT.

dsr_ 14 years ago | |

If you have an Android device, HandyCalc is free-beer and very, very good.

If you need serious calculating, there are all sorts of open source packages for Linux, and a number of devices of varying capabilities to run it on.

xymostech 14 years ago | | |

I actually think the problem with all of these solutions is standardized testing. Throughout high school, I used my iPhone as a calculator for everything, but whenever we needed one for a test I had to drag out my old TI, because people were afraid I would cheat if I had internet access.

mellifluousmind 14 years ago | |

Octave is pretty awesome. There is also R. Personally, I also do a lot of computing within interactive programming console (like irb, php -a, node). However, if you are doing symbolic expression, you can't go wrong with Octave

loeg 14 years ago |

Last release was 13 months ago; if you follow the Ti calculator community (http://www.ticalc.org/) you'll know this is fairly old news.

caladri 14 years ago | |

The blog, which others have mentioned and which is prominently-linked on the Sourceforge site (http://punix-os.blogspot.com/), would suggest that there is new news, and it's fairly significant. It has actually been run on real hardware rather than in-simulator, it would seem.

I find it not a little jarring that the kernel has been pasted together from code from other systems, not just inspired by code from other systems, in places. Is there a clear license statement I've missed? I'm assuming it's GPLv2, since it includes code directly from Linux, but it's hard to say even for those files since the license statements have been stripped.

Still, at least as neat as all of the excitement about the shocking new news that is a game including an emulator for a trivial, fanciful, microprocessor, and other things that Hacker News goes nuts over at great length and in a sustained way. If this is too old news for you, perhaps you'd like to read another iteration of how to hire software engineers (answer: don't), whether culture fit is racist (answer: probably), or how best to cloud your cloud cloud cloud Ruby cloud cloud bro cloud.

loeg 14 years ago | | |

Cool, I missed that.

efutch 14 years ago |

How about the old Casio PB-700 up to the PB-2000 that were programmable in Basic, C and Prolog?

carguy1983 14 years ago |

I'm a long-time user of the TI-89 (through hs, college, and now for business accounting) - has anyone solved the input problem? The keypad is only good for arithmetic and symbology, typing text is pretty awful.

rbanffy 14 years ago | |

If it's really Unix-like, it should be possible to attach a VT-100 to the serial port ;-)

According to http://punix-os.blogspot.com.br/2012/03/floating-point-grays... they want to add support to PS/2 keyboards through an adapter.

This http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/productDeta... also seems like a good solution.

mellifluousmind 14 years ago | |

I no longer have a TI-89, but I recall there is a way to turn on text typing mode. If you want fully size keyboard, you may want to look into TI-92.