

Unix-like operating system for the TI-89 and TI-92+ graphing calculators. - KonradKlause
http://sourceforge.net/projects/punix/

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

~~~
Someone
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
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
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
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.

~~~
peter_l_downs
Relevant XKCD: <http://xkcd.com/768/>

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

~~~
dsr_
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
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.

------
loeg
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
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
Cool, I missed that.

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

------
carguy1983
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
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...](http://punix-os.blogspot.com.br/2012/03/floating-point-grayscale-
scheduler.html) they want to add support to PS/2 keyboards through an adapter.

This
[http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/productDeta...](http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/productDetail/us_ti_keyboard.html)
also seems like a good solution.

