notwhoyouthink Posted July 13, 2017 Share Posted July 13, 2017 The TI-99/4 had a equation calculator built into it. It was removed in the 4a, but i was wondering if anyone has tried to recreate it, (looks, functionality and everything) for TI Basic, XB or Assembly? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apersson850 Posted July 13, 2017 Share Posted July 13, 2017 No need to. We got Muliplan instead. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+chue Posted July 13, 2017 Share Posted July 13, 2017 My understanding is that everything you can do in the equation calculator, you can do in TI BASIC. Is there something specific you are trying to do? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Airshack Posted July 13, 2017 Share Posted July 13, 2017 No need to. We got Muliplan instead. The 99/4 Equation Calculator menu option is evidence that this calculator company lacked vision and invited too many calculator engineers to the party. I'd be interested to hear about the decision to remove that (along with the calculator style overlay ready keyboard) from the 99/4A. Seems the calculator guys lost a battle but not before TI had already embarrassed themselves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Airshack Posted July 13, 2017 Share Posted July 13, 2017 (edited) The 99/4 Equation Calculator menu option is evidence that this calculator company lacked vision and invited too many calculator engineers to the party. I'd be interested to hear about the decision to remove that (along with the calculator style overlay ready keyboard) from the 99/4A. Seems the calculator guys lost a battle but not before TI had already embarrassed themselves. Of course hindsight is always 20/20. I suppose it can be argued that the 99/4's overall form factor was better than the Atari 400 and PET. Edited July 13, 2017 by Airshack 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RXB Posted July 14, 2017 Share Posted July 14, 2017 Also TI99 compared to the Vic20 the TI looked easy to use. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apersson850 Posted July 17, 2017 Share Posted July 17, 2017 They not only invited a few calculator engineers to the party, they gave the whole responsibility for the TI 99/4 to the calculator division. They probably thought that a "home computer" was just a over-fed calculator anyway. To the calculator guys, the equation calculator probably made just as much sense as the chicklet style keyboard, which resembled a, well, I already wrote it, over-fed calculator's keys. Take a look at the TI 74, the BASICALC, and you see the same idea again. By pressing a mode switch, you have either a full-function (but not programmable) scientific calculator, or you have a small BASIC-programmable computer. The BASIC is pretty similar to the Extended BASIC in the 99/4A. For some unimaginable reason, it's two completely different things in the same housing. You can't even pass a value from the BASIC part to the calculator or vice versa. It would have been much smarter if there was some pre-defined data structure, like an array CALC(0..9) which corresponds with the storage registers 0-9 on the calculator. But no. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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