DavidEngle wrote:
Does anyone have an update about the Prime calculator?
Sadly not on this forum. But Omnimaga and TI Planet (the latter is a French forum but most news have an English traduction; try hitting the flags on the top) have a lot of information. Omnimaga found a Prime emulator, which has been tested on TI Planet. Then, Ti Planet got a prototype and tested it, opened it and made a video of a program made by DJ_Omnimaga. Since there is not any kind of competition between those two websites, they sometimes work together or cross-post between both and quickly give interesting information to the community.
If anyone wants more information, check out TI-Planet's HP Calc Wiki:
http://tiplanet.org/hpwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
On the Prime, there's already a lot of information. USB connection dumps from Lionel Debroux, stats and implementation info from HP's Tim Wessman, information on HP-BASIC, and more...
Code: EXPORT spritetest2()
BEGIN
DIMGROB_P(G1,120,48,RGB(0,0,0));
TEXTOUT_P("HELLO",G1,0,0,7);
FOR Z FROM 1 TO 800 DO
RECT_P(RGB(Z/4,Z/4,255));
BLIT_P(G0,0,0,Z,Z,G1,RGB(80,255,255));
WAIT(0.03);
END;
END;
Wow, no need for sprite/hybrid libraries on this calculator, it seems! Nice discovery, DJ_O.
The USB descriptors are not from me, but I'm the one who added them, indeed
KermMartian wrote:
Wow, no need for sprite/hybrid libraries on this calculator, it seems! Nice discovery, DJ_O.
No problem , and since it appears that those GROB vars can be set higher than the screen resolution, this means that even scrolling might be possible. I need to get Critor to test yet another program on his real calc first to make sure that it's fast enough, though. If it's really insane, then maybe parralax scrolling?
Also we need to figure out how large those buffers can be. I know the calc has 16-32 MB of RAM, but I bet a 1200x800 GROB variable would already be in the megabytes range.
Cool. Looks like grob handling might be at least as good as if not better than the 50g. (A not-so-obvious feature on the 50g and earlier series is that the graph screen can be defined as larger than the screen and scrolled around—I haven't gotten to play around with that yet, though. No automatic scaling that I know of, though.)
How fast is that demo if you take out the WAIT(0.03)?
From what I read from Critor earlier, I think there wasn't much difference, but the scaled up HELLO world was almost twice faster.
I have found this page, which has some PDF downloads:
http://www.hpgraphingcalc.org/prime.html
A week from this Monday, HISD begins a new school year, so timing for the late September release of the Prime is not prime.
I am not sure how HP is going to topple TI in the high schools.
As an aside, the Prime has the enter key on the right hand side of the keyboard. For years, when using the HP41, it was on the left hand side. The next generation, the HP48 had the enter key on the left hand side ... why change?
Quote:
I am not sure how HP is going to topple TI in the high schools.
In the USA education technology marketplace, TI is just too well entrenched for anyone to make a significant dent into their market share, even with better products.
In other countries... we'll see
Neither Casio nor HP see the US high school student market as their prime place (no pun intended) to get a substantial customer base, I believe. I know that the Prizm, for example, is extremely popular in Portugal and elsewhere in Europe, but outside of the hobbyist/programmer community, not very well known in the US. I was sad to see that in California Target stores, the TI-84+CSE, TI-89 Titanium, TI-84+SE, and even TI-83+ were available, along with the Casio fx-9860g, but there were no Prizms at all.
Hold on to your chairs!
At age 70, I am going back to the university to take Calculus (Larson's 10th ... a stunning textbook, the likes of I have never seen before, except for Ralph Palmer Agnew's textbook from the 60's). Going through Larson's, I saw something early-on that caught my eye, which I recall seeing a reference to in the above link. I believe that when I finally have a Prime in hand, my classmates will pass out from excitement when I show them what it can do.
Anyway, I will provide a lengthy review of the Prime, and in the review mention some details about taking quantitative chemistry in the 60's, which at the time, all I could use to calculate with was a 5-place log book ... how times have changed in a lifetime,
DavidEngle wrote:
Anyway, I will provide a lengthy review of the Prime, and in the review mention some details about taking quantitative chemistry in the 60's, which at the tim, all I could use to calculate with was a 5-place log book ... how times have changed in a lifetime,
Congratulations on the course, and I will definitely look forward to that review. That sounds like a unique and very informative angle to review the device from. If I can get my hands on one soon, I'll also try to write a review, but I'll be approaching it from quite a different perspective.
The name of the game is to get a Prime ... who will be selling them here in the States? ... who should I buy from in Europe or the UK?
Needless to say, any info will be *MOST* appreciated.
I hope it's available at least in some places offline in USA, since some people are still relunctant about doing online transactions (safety concerns). Also the HP 39gII was only sold in Europe and China until recently (and even now, I think it's only available online for people outside China and Europe).
DavidEngle wrote:
The name of the game is to get a Prime ... who will be selling them here in the States? ... who should I buy from in Europe or the UK?
Needless to say, any info will be *MOST* appreciated.
I reached out to my HP contacts to find out when the Prime will be available in the states; if I hear back from them soon, I'll also ask if they know where the handheld will be available for purchase.
In the US, HP started to distribute some units to schools, but they are yet to be fouind in stores. They hope to make it available very soon but I don't know about any specific dates...
In France, we've been told September.
adriweb,
What date in September do schools begin the Fall session?
DavidEngle wrote:
adriweb,
What date in September do schools begin the Fall session?
Colleges start between now (the third week of August) and the second week of September, with most starting the first week of September here on the East Coast.
KermMartian,
I would think that if Amazon is not playing the game, then HP business model has some problems. Having said that, I would also say that if an independent was selling the Prime, I would buy from them first ... I would believe that to gain a certain level of technical support, the independent would provide a better level of quality versus Amazon .... who would you talk to at Amazon? Note: for several years, I was very fond of doing business with EduCalc.