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Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBallynfolksjr
Some of you may have already heard, but the maker of MirageOS and one of the most prominent figures in our community was accepted by Google for the Summer of Code project. He is making "A general low-level driver to interface with the USB itself, on top of which other USB device drivers could be written." But the most visible accomplishment of his work thus far must be the fact that he got an Optical USB Mouse interfacing with a TI-84+. You can view a 1.14MB, 640x480 video or a 841KB, 320x240 video in case you don't believe me. You can view an IRC log where he explains more about this project, start reading at 13:48:03. Dan also maintains a page on WikiTI with technical details and some other details. I think you'll have to agree that this certainly is promising, now perhaps the dream of a TI calculator with a DVD-RW drive can finally be realized.

Update 2 July 2005 00:15 UTC by Andy: Well, I was wanting to post this but he beat me to it. Anyway, I intend to include more details in the newsletter (due out this weekend), as well as other promising projects in the works.

Update 5 July 2005 02:13 UTC by Andy: I changed to video link to a much smaller local file, and added an even smaller file for dialup users.
1 Jul 2005, 11:33 GMT

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Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBgreenorange
Ya, I saw this on the MC forum. I can't open the vid in linux, but I can understand... darn i wanted to make the first TI mouse on the titanium... i was already thinking up the schematics... well, i guess it would not be such a hugely hard task as the only thing that needs to be worked on is the power the TI feeds the mouse through the usb... unless thats already adjusted... then its all software from there on. :D yay! Google Summer of Code! I hope he goes far!
1 Jul 2005, 13:33 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBAndy
All Dan had to do to plug the mouse in was get an appropriate (mini-A male to A female) adapter. The TI can provide enough power for the mouse directly. In fact, using a hub is out of the question since TI didn't make any support for it, and it'd just be a PITA to do so.
1 Jul 2005, 15:13 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBAndy
Also, there should be no reason you can't open DivX or XviD (whichever it is) or whatever on Linux. In fact, I'm tempted to reboot just to spite you. ;) Anyway, if you install the windows codec pack that might help. If it doesn't, I'll transcode it to WMV (which should save on filesize as well).
2 Jul 2005, 07:59 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBgreenorange
Im sure I could install something to run it... but I'm lazy :) I have RealPlayer 10, and thats about it :P Ill run it on my Windows installation
2 Jul 2005, 13:18 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBAndy
Actually, it was Motion JPEG with PCM audio -- nothing complex. There's absolutely no reason you shouldn't have been able to play it.
5 Jul 2005, 15:34 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBDarkAuron
Realplayer.. *gags*
15 Aug 2005, 14:57 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBzkostik
Yeah, cool thing but I doubt this will have much use. On the other hand, a generic usb driver just might allow peeps to use their thumbdrive on their calc which could indeed open new calc frontiers... (movies, media rich games).

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2 Jul 2005, 15:30 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBgreenorange
That would be l337! Never thought of that... hmm...
2 Jul 2005, 15:39 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBCoolv
Hmm. But the file system wouldn't be integrated into the OS. This would also face the horrendous limitation of link speed and availible memory. But a good idea in theory, and it would have its fair share of uses if the algorithm is perfected. Imagine this scenarion: you could store hundreds of memory backups of your calc and acess each one whenever you want! As in: gaming, math, calculus, whatever! And it WOULD be cool to watch movies IF the frame rate is big and the transfer/memory write/delete rates are right.
2 Jul 2005, 20:21 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBAndy
We were talking about this in #WikiTI the other day. Allow me to dig out the log.

Here we go: http://andysoft.ath.cx:2080/~andy/logs/wikiti/wikiti.062805.txt Time index 18:04:04.

In short: Don't hold your breath, especially for NTFS (which most hard drives are nowadays) and Flash drives (which do use FAT32 for the most part, but draw way too much power for the calculator to provide).

As for watching movies, NEVER going to happen unless the file is in a calc-specific format (and even then don't hold your breath). Driving the USB would take pretty much all of the CPU time -- it has to read and write from the ports almost constantly, only stopping to offload to RAM.

And yes, I know how to hack threaded.cgi to get HTML. :)
3 Jul 2005, 07:39 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBzkostik
Well, speaking of movies they would ofcourse have to be in a calc format but they certainly are possible. I don't know if any of you remember TIMM but that thing was pretty awesome and only limitation was the small memory size. As with thumbdrive, they really don't take too much power, maybe .050-.1mw or so. That ofcourse would shorten the battery by alot but should still provide several hours of usage. Also, one can format a thumbdrive using FAT16 if for some reason FAT32 reader can't be implemented. I think if its possible to run a thumbdrive from a calc then it'll only be time till above said is fixed up.

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3 Jul 2005, 15:46 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBAndy
JMan tested his flash drive; it needed 200mA according to his computer. Dan has only had success with up to 100mA devices. Also, I seriously doubt AAA batteries can provide 200mA of power, for any length of time. As for the speed -- I'm talking the actual transfer with the USB will take a _LOT_ of clock cycles. To get decent file transfer rate (not to mention processing the data you receive even just to decipher the FAT) would leave not much else processor time for other things. Video from external storage devices is highly improbable. Not impossible, but not useful enough to make it worth it.
3 Jul 2005, 17:14 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBCoolv
Yeah, that's really what I thought...
4 Jul 2005, 11:17 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBDarkAuron
Andy, do you have any personal experience with any of this at all, or are you just stating a bunch of crap out of stuff you're hearing here and there? Anyways, check your #calcgames logs for more info, if you havn't already seen the messages :P
15 Aug 2005, 14:56 GMT

 
Re: Dan Englender making strides in TI-84 USBAndy
meh. hush you. :P that was a relatively long time ago, and at the time it did indeed look unlikely. or maybe this was my intent all along. who knows. :P Of course, I'm seeing a WHOLE BUNCH of people over at ticalc thinking this will usher in all sorts of stuff in the VERY NEAR future, when in all practicality it will take a long time to get some of that stuff, if it ever happens at all. There *IS* only so much you can do with a 15MHz z80. oh and, it IS a calc specific format, so blah. :P and really i wouldnt count 10fps 1bit to be all that great, stuff like 15fps 2bit would leave much left to be desired. you could do it the hard way, having it stored as a 2bit image (or whatever) and doing grayscale stuff found in games, or run a 30fps 1bit stream where it's "pre-grayed".
17 Aug 2005, 15:42 GMT