RPN83P: RPN calculator for TI-83+ TI-84+ inspired by HP-42S

[goosnarrggh]

(11-22-2023 06:54 PM)bxparks Wrote:  With regards to (4), are you talking about the 84+CSE, or the 84+CE? (The people who created the names for these calculators must have been on drugs. It is completely confusing.) The 84+CSE is a technological dead-end for TI calculators. I won't port to that. The 84+CE... maybe. Those use a different CPU (eZ80), a different screen, different development tools (probably). I hear there's a C compiler for it, no idea how good it is. But get this, the sizeof(int) on that compiler is 3 (not 2 or 4) because the eZ80 processor has 24-bit registers. What an adventure that would be.

I gather that writing a community-driven freeware flash app for the 84+CE might be a dead end because TI has changed the signing algorithm for flash apps on that platform - I think the only viable path to distributing flash apps on that platform is to submit it to TI for commercial distribution.

Still, it might be viable to distribute it as a program that is totally resident in RAM. Although, native compiled/assembled programs running from RAM are restricted if the user has the latest OS version for the 84+CE. They'd need to jailbreak to get past this restriction.

Yes, there is at least one experimental fork of LLVM/clang with support for the eZ80. (And also the classic Z80 as part of the same fork.) Heck, the Z80 also had earlier C compilers as well, but to my knowledge none of them have been able to leverage the same kind of sophistication as you can get with LLVM. That being said, the Z80 architecture was never created with C-compatible calling conventions in mind, so it might be less efficient than what you could achieve coding assembly by hand.