Hands-On with the TI Presenter

[@amihartz]

I got one off eBay for $45 with all the cables. :D Pair this with the TI-Keyboard and it's a pretty nice setup, you can write code very comfortably via Mimas.

[@rachelannkrueger7638]

Im planning on buying one soon

[@ti83programmer]

@sircmpwn Yes, I've attempted it, and no, it looks horrible, like ZTetris in this video. Grayscale works by drawing to the LCD REALLY REALLY fast, which the TI Presenter just doesn't do well.

[@triskalguilo]

Do you know if the video update speed of a Voyage 200, connected through a Presenter, would be fast enough to play games? I have a TI-92 Plus and a Presenter right now, but the video update speed is about as fast as you show in this video -- i.e. it makes gaming damn near impossible.

[@EposVox]

Were you able to dig any deeper on this? I'm still looking for a way to output games cleanly and this is about the only drop of info I can get. Would love to chat about ways to avoid using a camera.

[@amihartz]

Old comment but... no, you can't present games on this. My guess is that this thing relies on an operating system routine used to draw to the screen called _GrBufCpy. The calculator does not have any video RAM, the operating system instead stores video memory in regular RAM at a memory address labeled as "PlotSScreen". The system routine _GrBufCpy when called will use OUT/IN instructions to control the LCD driver chip directly to output that data to the screen. It is possible to draw to the screen without using _GrBufCpy by using OUT/IN instructions to control the LCD driver chip directly. A lot of games do this because the operating system routine is not particularly fast and if your game demands high performance, using more optimized code for plotting to the screen is desirable. However, none of these games seem to be compatible with the TI-Presenter nor the TI-ViewScreen. Hence my assumption that these devices are relying on the _GrBufCpy call to know when to update the screen and where to pull that data from. This means that anything Texas Instruments made will display fine, but things the community makes using custom graphic routines will often not work at all. So sadly games are not really viable. Some utility applications are, though. Mimas, which is the best on-calc assembler I'm aware of, works great on the Presenter and the ViewScreen, and if you are using a TI-84+, you can display both to the Presenter and plug in a keyboard at the same time, allowing you to writing Z80 assembly code on a monitor with an external keyboard. That's just a guess, though, it could simply be a speed thing and these games are so optimized that they are plotting to the screen far faster than the Presenter and ViewScreen can keep up with. I haven't done too much tests, but it definitely seems like all these highly optimized games will not display at all.

[@rachelannkrueger7638]

This kinda like turning your ti graphic calculator into a ti computer like more powerful ti 99/4A. But if the game would play better would be great but i like your video. I seen some of you other videos are neat as well. I seen the age of this video i surprised no one's else yet have a video about this I can see.

[@kuenzign]

Would you happen to still have the program you wrote to display different things on the tv? If so, I would be very interested in seeing how it works.

[@kuenzign]

+kuenzign Never mind, I managed to find you website and was able to download it there.

[@marcsheinberg6487]

Thx. What is the difference between the presenter and the screen view on the 92 plus or 200,?

[@keyboard_g]

The same Presenter device will work with 92 Plus via a ScreenView Type 2 cable. The cable he is showing converts from USB on some calculators to that same Screen View connector.

[@0xbenedikt]

+Brandon W what USB version does the presentation link use? USB 1.1 or USB 2.0? If it was USB 1.1 or of a similar speed, I would have a fast enough protocol analyzer.

[@ti83programmer]

I don't recall off the top of my head, but I do have a Beagle 12 USB protocol analyzer.