Re: Program Entry Service --> Automation Message #22 Posted by glynn on 30 Sept 2003, 4:44 a.m., in response to message #21 by Dave Shaffer
I much prefer an actual add-on, which permanently "enhances" the function of the calculator.
In a 33c, for instance, one could imagine a postage-stamp sized circuit board designed to hide in the internal cavity of the calc. Tagged to the matrix lines of the keyboard, so that it takes on the keyboard entry function electronically. Paralleled, in effect, with the real keyboard. If it is to synchronize with cpu signals on those pins, it might well be able to derive timing for its function from there.
It would communicate with the outside (probably a pc serial port) via the power-port. Your wall-charger would be a modified version of the regular one, but have a serial input port, and the incoming keypress data would modulate the power in a way that could be interpreted by the keypress circuit.
So your 33c would look the same in every way, yet a user could send a file of keypress data into it when needed. In every other circumstance, the extra circuit card would be dormant, benignly silent *(maybe the presence/absence of a modulating signal on the power line would wake/sleep the circuit)*.
I have no idea of the internal workings of a 33c, yet I think this sort of thing SHOULD be in the realm of the possible. Anyone know whether this could or could not be done, and why?
Would darn sure be convenient to have a "library" of programs that might be downloaded rather than "prodded" into the machine.
:-)
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