Oh, I didn't know you had a whole project you were working on with the same name... But I would be totally cool with renaming my project if you think it'd be a cool idea, after all, I was inspired by your project in the first place. All those names are SO cool, but I think that Calc82 fits well enough. So if you can tell me how to change the name on your site, I'd be happy to go with that. I will change it on my site. I will be working really hard tomorrow to finish the calculator. Pictures will be posted tomorrow of the various construction phases... that's it

YEAAHHHHHHHHHHH

Hey! I changed the name on my site, so I need help here. I can't figure out how to change it, even on my own PHPBB forum on my site. (PS how did you change the look so much Kerm? I really like this, and really don't like the normal PHPBB style.)

Yup, you didn't see the Ultimate Calculator 3 dev log? If not, you should go check it out. I'll rename this topic to Calc82 Modded Calculator Project.

I didn't finish today . We had some roof trouble today... had to get a guy working on it... SO I will finish this next weekend hopefully. No work got done today, and the roofer will be here tomorrow. We're leaving the house because the have to remove the air conditioner to work on the roof, and we live in WAY south New Mexico. So I'll try to update again soon!

Ouch, good luck with that. I'll look forward to updates, and in the meantime, stay cool!

They still aren't done!!! Its been 90 degrees in my house FOR 2 DAYS! So here are some pictures of the mess they made I took yesterday...



So its been really miserable here, black roof, holes, and no AC in the whole house

That's terrible, so sorry to hear it. On a related note, I can't see any of your images...

I have been working on it again. Marching Band is over and everything! (I had a great time in Las Vegas performing in front of over 2000 people!) Oh, and my computer and internet were down for a while. Anyway back on topic.
No Pics, . I still have trouble doing that whole process and everything. (gotta scan the darn thing). But I can tell you I have de-soldered a microscopic little connecter, with my old 25 year old soldering iron my dad gave me as junk. I soldered 6 itty-bitty 30 gauge wire to the pads. Routed those off into nowhere land. Then, I took the MP3 out, and destroyed the whole top edge of the bottom half of the calc to fit the buttons better. (Gotta fix that later) I soldered all the power for the camera to the battery. No voltage regulator, because I can't afford the space.
To do the whole power thing I was talking about, I took my soldering iron and melted a little divot thing for the wire, and soldered to the battery pad. When I need 1.5 volts, I solder to the far right, when I need 3 volts, and solder to the second to the right, etc. Then I made a tough decision on the USB. I've played with it before. For any noobs who might ever decide "Oh, I'll just cut the cable and solder the little pretty wires inside to each other." or "Why not just take this connector from this old device and solder it to my project and hope it'll work." YOUR WRONG. It is a high frequency signal. There WILL be tons of electro-magnetic radiation flying all over the place, and it WILL have errors in the message, that CANNOT be decoded by the host controller in your device (you did remember to buy and install one of those right?) or in your computer. So I have a cable coming out the side. Kerm, don't kill me okay! It looks bad right now, but I will have an idea that'll fix it up all pretty before the end. If nothing else, I will have learned everything I needed to in order to accomplish it in a more expensive and fancy calculator, (TI-83 baby!). Lessons learned and everything on the USB already.
And then the code. I've stolen some of Kerm's old code for mice and keyboards, and began the porting process. Thanks Kerm! Of course, everything I know about z80 asm was flipped upside down on me with the crazy assemblers that were available for the 82. The syntax is different enough to screw you over twice! You go to debug, and it won't work, plus there is no pointer telling you exactly which line is wrong, (if there is PLEASE correct me) so you have to go back to the tutorials for both and check each command, and MAYBE, that one line of code will work. Plus there are commands that aren't necessarily available for the 82, that are for the 83, so you have to make something up you think will work, AND, i have nothing except VTI to work with! So I probably will try to finish the calc before I think about coding. Its one of those counting the chicken before it hatched thing!
So in conclusion, sorry Kerm for not telling you what I've done with this in the last FIVE MONTHS! Hope you forgive me when you see the result.

PS, I'll reiterate my question on IRC, what size cap for the overclock. I used 27 pf I think, and there are funny little lines on the screen. (i.e. won't work!)

The problem with overclocking is that the LCD can't handle data being sent to it faster than a certain rate. There are workarounds, but they're not pretty. Go for a higher value. Regarding USB: yeah, it's sensitive, but it's not as bad as all that. As long as you have shield continuity and you haven't exposed more than an inch or so, your integrity should be fine, in my experience. Also, *YOU'RE WRONG. Grammar is important. At any rate, good luck on this; I hope to see pictures and progress soon.

Kerm, the old RichFiles site recommended a 33pf cap, and I used a 27. 27 was the original. I guess I should've checked against the old TI masterminds before making up my own! So I think the over clock SHOULD work now. On the topic of USB, I always make sure there is contact in the shield. Everyone knows the casing on the connectors is connected together, right? So you gotta get that right. I used aluminum foil as a shield. Thought it would work. Maybe it was my shoddy solder connections. I got a glob on 1 of the wires. Thought it would be okay. It is a serious cosmetic failure if I have a wire stuck out the side, but a switching circuit, (i.e. 2 DPDT switches) has its own resistance and capacitance. A few diodes could help with that, but its not really serial. In the D+ and D- lines, data flows in BOTH directions. So being the novice noob I am, I assume not mess with it. It is kinda scary with the 100 dollars or so I've spent on this thing. If you can think of a way to minimalize the darned resistance and capacitance, I'd love to know. And then on the programming, I'll surely talk with you once I have a platform to work with. I'll even post code. Still in the future I'm afraid though!

P.S. With CHRISTMAS CASH, I can get more parts!!! horray!

Good luck with the Christmas cash! What kinds of parts will you be getting! And not only does current flow in both directions, but I believe that USB changes voltage to tell the controller how much current it needs. I need to double-check that for BrandonW.

I need to buy some connectors for the USB now. And a whole list of things on my table I don't feel like looking at right now.
And I wanna get tools. I need to buy a small soldering iron for one. I'm using a large hand soldering iron. I use it for perfboard. Its like a 3 decades old too. Takes like 10 minutes to heat up enough. And a good multimeter. My 80 dollar multimeter fried up, and too much is damaged to fix it. It all started a Saturday morning a few weeks ago.....

(flashback)
I was doing some AC circuitry. I needed to diagnose a strange error, (it wouldn't power up), so I stuck it into the circuit, but OH NO, I didn't move the probes over. The thing beeped nice and loud, and I yanked it out. Then, I fixed my mistake, but CRAPPY THING WOULDN'T READ A SINGLE VOLT IN A AC OUTLET!!! So it wouldn't measure anything ever again.

THE END

And some other things like wick and solder, and things. Things I'll use up before the year is over again. Ahhh, poor calc has to deal with me.

Where were your probes connected to when you probed the AC circuit?

They were connected to my diode bridge, which I made faulty (darn diodes). It shouldn't have been a problem, except I had the probes done up wrong.

I meant to ask where on the multimeter the probes were connected to.

I'm 99.99999% positive you just blew the fuse. Pop it open and replace the fuse.

To the plus fused and plus. \o/! I shorted the darn thing and ran current through.

Again, I'm more or less sure it's just the fuse in the multimeter that's blown.

The fuse... Just gotta pop it open right? This is a common mistake I assume. Makes me feel dumb though. How stupid can you get?! hooking up plus and plus together...