Cutterjohn, just to clarify some things:
You can downgrade 3.2 to 3.1 without any problems. TI hasn't added any protection to it (despite Ndless being out for several months already when they released 3.2)
Even the update from 3.2.1212 to 3.2.1219 doesn't add any extra protection. So please, stop slamming TI about this.
Yes, TI blocked Ndless in 3.2, but they gave us the freedom to downgrade.


The reason they block Ndless is because of teachers. If they would not block Ndless, they have the possibility of losing very much market share. And I can understand that, after all they are a company, and companies go for profit.
And beside that they gave us Lua, and 3.2 added an awesome Physics engine to it. Very powerful stuff can be made nowadays without the need of native coding. While it would be nice, I can't say TI's neglecting the programming community. In fact, they have been VERY kind and listening to requests, comments that several community members had to say.

Sorry for the rant..

I suppose the ASIC might partially explain the pricing on those, as I can't imagine that they do much volume except for a few schools maybe.

Speaking of which, I had almost forgotten. I actually do own a TI-85(given in lieu of partial loan re-payment), however I never had a serial cable for it, and so, just never used it. Still looks to be tricky finding a cable as their new silverlink cable apparently doesn't support it(ticalc.org), leaving me to remember to track down a graphlink <-> USB cable some day, or build one(along with one for my datarover).

You forced me go find it in that desk drawer to see which model it was. Those older calcs sure had nice keys, just hope that the claims of improved HP-50g keys are true... even the prizm's keys don't seem to be all that great to me.. a little "loose"... and they had no display models where I bought it so I couldn't try the other models that they had in the store.

I use a Ti-84+. I wish I had the Ti-84+ SE AND the Ti-89 Titanium, because then I could get the best of both. I thought about saving up to buy a Ti NSpire, but from what I read, programming on a Ti Nspire just isn't what it used to be. I guess I could try a Voyage 200 or Ti 9x, those are still around, and their BASIC is much more powerful. The Casio PRIZM seems really cool. It has way more RAM than a Ti 84+SE, and it has color! (F*CK TI!) For now, I'll stick to emulators and save up money for more power calcs.

GinDiamond, welcome to Cemetech. Be sure to Introduce Yourself when you get a chance, and tell us about your current programming projects. Do you write TI-BASIC? Are you looking to learn? Yes, I agree that the Prizm is the best of both worlds at this point, and I hope that at least in part thanks to our work on educational programs, games, and new programming languages (LuaZM!) more people and more teachers will start using it. Sounds like a good plan as far as sticking to emulators for now.

Yeah, I like to program in Ti-BASIC. Lately, I've been fooling around with the Axe parser, and the DoorsCS SDK (use DCS7.2 beta 2).

I added a post to the Introduce Yourself! thread, explaining my story of of the Ti-84+.

I am also looking into C. I've heard that it is somehow possible to make a Ti-84+ game/program in C rather than just pure ASM. Is this true? If so, how can I do it?

Great! I'll probably point you at my book at some point for cementing your TI-BASIC knowledge, and feel free to post topics in the relevant areas of the forum for Axe and z80 ASM.

Possible, but massively inefficient. SDCC creates very unoptimized z80 assembly code, so you're better of writing games in hand-coded ASM or using C on the Casio Prizm.

Oh, so no C.

I'm also planning on making a roguelike in TI-BASIC or Axe. I think Axe has more ability than just Ti-BASIC, but Ti-BASIC is much easier to use. Ti-BASIC is slow, but I did find that there are some sort of programs that can turn your Ti-BASIC program into ASM code to compile. I've tried one or two of those such tools, and so far, none of them have worked AT ALL, despite their claims.

Is it also true that "Learn Assembly in 28 Days" is outdated? The Devpack8x thing is a 16-bit program that won't work on my 64-bit Windows 7 rig. I'm currently using the DCS7 SDK, but I can't really understand the 28 Days tutorial very well. Can you help point me in the right direction?

Start your own topic about z80 ASM and we can discuss your issues in more depth. Axe is more of a game-programming language; have you considered Hybrid BASIC? That's using the libraries that Doors CS provides (Celtic III, xLIB, PicArc, Omnicalc, and the DCSB Libs) inside BASIC programs. No, none of those BASIC to ASM programs works for anything but trivial programs. If you need specific help walking through hybrid BASIC, feel free to make a topic for that instead/as well.

Sure, I'll make two topics, one on my failed ASM programs and on on Hybrid BASIC.