KnightOS – An open-source OS for calculators | Hacker News Reader

KnightOS – An open-source OS for calculators

knightos.org

148 pointsddevault20 comments

I'd just love to see a solid open-source standard graphing calculator app for the common tablets - something like a more user-friendly version of gnu octave or something. The vendor lock-in by the education industry and TI is absurd.

Seriously, the few times a month I need to crunch numbers I reach for my phone, then get frustrated and just use Google because my TI83's batteries have been dead for years. I don't know what it is but I haven't seen a touch calculator interface anywhere near as good as a standard graphing calculator for just banging out some computations.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.supware.ti...

I wish there was an open-source OS supporting phones like Nokia 1202 http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_1202-2573.php or cycle computers http://www.sigmasport.com/en/produkte/bikecomputer/topline_w... - tiny devices with dot matrix displays and traditionally limited capabilities.

I thought it's never going to happen (unless I get wealthy and support creating such a device, of course) but this one is close.

You certainly could replace the memory chip of whatever device you want. Chances are, as long as it has a few necessary components (or code to emulate them) Linux will run pretty well.

Rockbox is also sort of close: http://www.rockbox.org/

I guess it already supports more chips and screen sizes than something aimed at TI calculators would.

But can it really be called an operating system?

I think so. There's a gameboy emulator in there:

http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/PluginRockboy

I guess it would be more applicable to the bike computer use case than a phone. But who knows.

Neat. I sold my TI-84 Plus in favor of a HP RPN calculator: It's not really comparable, but there are more open source projects around calculators like the WP34s[1] project which turns a cheap HP business calculator (HP 20b/30b) into a RPN calculator with a lot of features.

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/wp34s/

Holy heck, an in-browser demo. I've always wanted to try KnightOS but the TI-Nspire steadfastly refuses to run it.

You're in luck!

www.omnimaga.org/ti-nspire-projects/z80e-for-nspire/

I like the ?sneaky-repost ;)

Ha! Preemptive multitasking and a rotating cube as a demo. Nice work. Would love to see this ported to something else constrained like the Pebble Watch.

If anyone here is interestd in helping with the project, we just made this tool inspired by Mozilla's "What can I do for Mozilla" tool:

http://www.knightos.org/contributing/what-can-i-do.html#!/pr...

It's not just assembly!

This makes me so sentimental. My parents did not let me have a computer when growing up, but they did let me have a calculator. So I did what I had to do to buy a ton of them (TI82, HP48GX etc). At some point I purchased a TI92 but when reading about that now I see it was classified as a computer and not a calculator.

@Sir_Cmpwn, you should document somewhere that at least the TI-83+ ROM will run fine on Android using the Andie Graph emulator. :)

Send a pull request! We're very open to them. Also accepting patches on the mailing list as of today if you prefer.

I can see this being used to cheat in exams ;)

The facilities of the TI are generally usefull for that.

Which is why TI added a key combo that erases the memory.

Except most teachers only cleared the RAM because they didn't know any better, so you could "archive" whatever you wanted in the flash...

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