New member introductions: Say hello here!

[Phyxie]

First off I was never a forum person before and I don't like trying to jump into large communitiews but I founds this site looking for info on the TI83+CE and saw that it was pretty new so I decided to give it a shot. About me: I've been programming for the last 10 years and have done everything from making games to writing emulators and even a bit of that hacky hack. Recently I've been very interested in making SNES ROM hacks, mainly Super Mario world. even more recently it reminded me of how fun it was messing with TI's calculators. I started learning to make asm programs and never really got far because I didnt have enough time. Now I've started learning again and that is part of why I ended up finding this place. I really want to learn more about writing assembler code and thought this might be a good place to ask questions maybe with all the other TI developers here. I'm also an osu! player I also noticed a couple osu players here which surprises me, I haven't ever really seen any outside of osu itself even though there are 5 million players.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Hiya and glad to have you around here. I hope you enjoy your stay even if you are not much into forums.

Actually outside France we will get the TI-84+CE instead, but the hardware is almost identical so TI-83PCE games and programs will most likely run on both. I didn't do much SNES ROM hacking myself (only a crappy SMW level) but I was curious about it a few years ago and I had in mind to port some of my old calculator RPGs to SNES or NES ROM hacks in the future. It's just that making music seems much harder than just using Mario Paint and Music 2000.

As for ASM, I know that unknownloner, MateoConLechuga, Keoni29 and AssemblyBandit do ASM so hopefully they might be able to help you. As for OSU you are in luck, since Unknownloner plays it a lot too (and creates OSU maps). I think the reason why we have some OSU players is because the founding members of this site were very into Japanese culture (such as anime).

[Phyxie]

Gah, TI-84+CE is what I meant, wasn't thinking right. That was one other reason I came back to asm programming for the TI calcs. one of the things I hated was TI continuing to use the z80 in the TI84+CSE and for the types of games I want to make, without being an asm wizard, I would need more than the 15 MHz z80. I've heard that the TI-84+CE will have an eZ80 processor which has potential to run at 50MHz which should be more than enough for me to achioeve my end goal of creating a Gameboy emulator or at the very least porting a few games. Also as a sidenote Engtlish is my second language (natively Polish) and I think I can speak it pretty good now but I do make stupid mistakes sometimes so sorry in advance if I do.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

No problem. TI can be very confusing with their calculator names anyway, because in France almost every model were renamed in the last few years (TI-83+ -> TI-82+, TI-84+SE -> TI-83+Fr, TI-83 -> TI-82 Stats.Fr). And yeah the Color 84+SE was disappointing for speed. I am unsure who thought about putting a 15 MHz processor in there. At least now they have righted their wrongs for that, even if it's not perfect. If you check the videos on the front page, you'll notice that the 84+CE menus and typing is way faster than the 84+CSE. I think it might be 25-30 MHz or so, judging by the speed, but I could be wrong. 50 MHz would have been nice.


That said, there already exists a Game Boy emulator called TI-Boy CSE, though, by calc84maniac. https://www.omnimaga.org/ti-boy-se-game-boy-emulator-for-ti-83se84/ so ideally it would be best to try making an emulator for another console (maybe the Game Gear, NES or Atari?)

Don't worry about your English, because so far it seems very fine, plus 90% of the CodeWalrus users (as well as the entire staff) don't speak English as native language (4 of the staff speak French and one speaks Dutch).

[Phyxie]

I only know that the ez80's max is around 50MHz from past projects, it porobably wont be that high but from tests done I've heard it performs arithmitic, graphics io and memory access about 2.7 t0 3 times as fast so I think a number between 40 and 45 is a reasonable guess. Than again I could be completely wrong. Now that you point it out a gameboy emu wouldn't be as fun. An NES emulator seems very possible it only runs at 1.79MHz compared to the gameboy's 4.194304MHz.. Plus I am already very familiar with the 65o816 processor from my SNES emulator and the NES uses pretty much the same cpu only 8 bits (the 6508 CPU). I still have to learn how to program for the z80 before I can do anything though. (If anyone passing through has any good resources or tutorials it would help a lot).

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Yeah I remember that alberthrocks wanted to create a custom community calculator back in 2010 called OTZ80, along with an higher end model called OTARM. TI probably used 15 MHz Z80s in the TI-84+CSE in order to keep costs to a minimum.

As for the NES emu, the main issue that could arise is that it's not the same processor. With TI-Boy CSE' Calc84maniac could take shortcuts as he was pretty much emulating a processor from the same family as the calc itself. But if you are familiar with it then maybe you might have more luck making such emulator? (although I usually recommend starting small at first, if you are new to ASM or haven't used it in several years.)

[Phyxie]

Don't get me wrong I'm not planning on jumping right into a full scale emulator, maybe a nice pong program first kek. and I think TI used the z80 again was because from the TI84 to TI-84CSE not much really changed other than the screen, ram and Flash memory  (I think?) everything is pretty much the same as before but with a bigger color screen and a newer OS. As for the CPU emulation, the Gameboy uses a 6502 which is very simimilar to the z80 using the same opcodes as a stock z80 for all but around 20-30 custom instructions. The NES uses a 6508 which is just a custom motorola 6502 CPU so I am expecting (hoping) that it will be similar and I will be able to sort of cheat the opcode translation.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Yeah I am just making sure because many people actually do that . And yeah not much changed with the CSE (although it brought back the 128K RAM chip that TI had removed in 2007 in the 84+/SE, which caused some programs to stop working on newer 84+/SE models). I think they were just lazy in 2013 and thought that people would accept such calc model (they did, due to liking working around old school hardware limitations and pushing it to its limits, but still).

And nice to hear about those CPUs. TI-Boy CSE runs slower than the real thing, but with a faster CPU I think it might run closer to full speed with some frame skipping. Maybe a NES emu wouldn't be too far off. Even with frame skipping it would still be enjoyable.

[Snektron]

As for ASM, I know that unknownloner, MateoConLechuga, Keoni29 and AssemblyBandit do ASM so hopefully they might be able to help you.

I do ASM too

Hai phyxie
For ASM tutorials there's a very good dutch wikibook,
but im guessing youre not dutch. Futhermore there's
"Learn ASM in 28 days" and ofcourse omnimaga.org's
asm section.

Sorry i don't have links, im on mobile so maybe ill
edit them in when im on my pc.

[aetios]

Hi there! I'd suggest making a new thread if you have any questions or ideas. Also, the emulator calc84maniac wrote for the CSE is, well, pretty slow Why not give it a shot, I'd say. I'm also interested in your SNES ROM hacking, please show it off

[Dream of Omnimaga]

It will be hard to do something faster than calc84 on the CSE considering his 9 years of experience, though.

[aetios]

The CSE is at max speed already.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

But you just said TI-Boy could be made faster than calc84 can

[Duke "Tape" Eiyeron]

Maybe with hardware mod, but that's not really legit as not everyone could do it, it's not like drawing on a jumper to change the model settings (hello Casio College 2d)

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Which reminds me, I wonder if the jumper trick or something similar is used to make the difference between the TI-84+CE and TI-83PCE? I haven't got the chance to check the hardware in details on TI-Planet.