Which One?

[Tiogger]

I am planning on asking for a TI Calculator for this upcoming Christmas for some programming fun. There are a lot of them to choose from. I noticed the TI-83/84 Plus seems to be the popular choice. The TI-89 Titanium seems to be frowned upon as a gaming platform due to it's difficulty in getting games to work on it. The TI N-Spire seems to be relatively new to the homebrew scene as it was only "jailbroken" recently and there doesn't seem to be much info and games for it, however from what i hear it's supposed to be very powerful more then most TI calculators. So what i would like to know is what calculator model do you recommend i ask for Christmas this year so that i can play games and even program games for it? any assistance in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

TIogger

[Xeda112358]

I do not have an Nspire, but I do own an 89 Titanium, 84+, and 84+SE. I love the 89t for its math capabilities and its powerful programming language. There have been some great BASIC games made as well as some ASM games.

I program mostly for the 83+/84+/SE calcs, however, and I thoroughly enjoy it. There is tons of documentation and a large community of users.

For the Nspires, the userbase is growing and more documentation is coming out. If you can get a good hold of programming for the Nspire, you can probably find yourself in a nice position in the community

[tiuser1010]

In my personal experience I would choose a calculator from the z80 series, specifically the 83 or 84 for programming. There is already a lot of information on how to program these calculators. Many examples, tutorials and almost countless resources already present for them. (not to say there are not any for other calculator series, again this is my own personal experience.) My personal favorite is the TI-83 Plus Sliver Edition, because being a sliver edition, it has an huge amount of ROM, it a little over 1.5MB and it has little more RAM than a TI-84 Plus,Sliver Edition or otherwise. (just enough to play most gameboy games with the TI-Boy emulator.) The Downside is that the TI-83 Plus Sliver Edition is discontinued and if you do get one, the only way i have found to connect to a computer is the Silver USB Cable. They cost around $20. If your trying to get the 83 Plus sliver edition try ebay. I got mine for $40 instead of buying an over-priced $100 84 Plus. Overall I would say ask for the 83 Plus sliver edition if possible and/or plausible, and if you can't, go with the 84 plus sliver edition for programming. Whether you are new to calculator programming or just programming altogether, I would say the z80 series as a whole is always a good choice.


Now in terms of games the choice for me becomes harder. They all have some good games. I personally like DOOM, Desolate and Robot War for the z80 series. I am Pretty sure now that all the series, z80, 68K(85 and up), and nspire, all have gameboy emulation, but the nspire probably has the best quality, followed by the 68K series. Again Gaming a little tough so I'm not going to base it off of gaming.

If you ever get the chance I would say try calculators from many series, expand and try not to limit yourself to one calculator, or even a series of calculators.

[jammasterz]

Im terribly sorry for spam, but why cant i post any new thread? I have activated my account, but nothing changed.

[Xeda112358]

There might be a restriction in place that only allows members who have posted before to make new topics (to prevent spam bots from coming on and making new topics). Are you now able to?

[jammasterz]

[Xeda112358]

Awesome, glad to help

[tiboyz]