I missed out on this whole thing being born a bit early. For us, it was 8 bit computers. And for me personally, I grabbed one of the Tandy Pocket Computers and used the crap out of it well into the TI era.
Looks like a whole lot of fun! Suppose I could have jumped in, but by then I was away from needing the calculator, ah well.
Yeah, this is a pretty narrow window of the millennial generation. If you had been born too late (e.g. Gen-Z), you'd have high production AAA-production mobile games to play between classes and after school instead.
One thing the author overlooks is how game programmers were able to exploit the primitive networking capabilities of the calculator. I fondly remember playing multiplayer Bomberman by plugging two TI-83 together via the 2.5" link cable.
I recently had enough nostalgia to pick up a new 2021 TI-84 Plus CE PYTHON unit. On one hand, it hurts to buy a 20+ year old CPU for over $100. On the other, there's something satisfying about still being able to program TI-Basic via muscle-memory using the token-based input.
Author here. Great point - I totally forgot to write up CalcNet! It was a protocol designed by KermMartian (DoorsCS guy) for connecting up to 8 calculators to a "local network" of tied-together link ports. There was also bridge software to GlobalCalcNet, which let you sort of VPN your calculator into virtual CalcNet networks over USB.
I regret that I have less use for calculators than I used to. You can pry my TI-89 from my cold dead hands. Still very useful especially for things like unit math.
The TI-89 blew my mind when I accidentally discovered Exact Mode. I had fed it a problem from my Number Theory homework just for fun... it wasn't supposed to actually answer it!
This takes me back. In high school I actually modded my TI-89 (circa 2001) with a lower Ohm resistor. The clock ran on a simple RC circuit, so you could "overclock" it by soldering in a new resister. Got a pretty impressive bump as I recall. And then when it became common enough games started to support a turbo mode!
Just gave my son my ti-89 for middle school, apparently it’s a big novelty and has gotten him slightly more motivated for math class. Teacher told him to put his name on it and not let it out of sight.
You're not too old! Embedded systems and home computers grew up together. The TI-84+ that my parents bought me in 2005 was great, especially because my parents paid for it. I feel like any device that becomes popular in schools and is repairable/hackable, will become the platform of the future. The article says "you either knew, or were, that kid" and if you think you were that kid, you probably were.
When trying to figure out when embedded systems became mainstream, I accidentally just wrote an incomplete history of embedded pocket computing.
1967: LOGO programming language developed by Seymour Papert.
1970: Sharp QT-8B calculator was the first battery-powered calculator
1972: HP-35 calculator was first scientific calculator
1974: Sinclair Scientific 1974 was affordable, programmable, moddable, repairable. 400 functions in library.
1976: PIC microcontrollers released.
1976: Zilog Z80 launched.
1977: Tandy TRS-80 released, using Zilog Z80 chip.
1977: Apple II released, with colour graphics.
1980: Epson HX-20 released, a laptop with receipt printer and screen. (my dad wrote his Ph.D. thesis on one)
1981: BBC Micro released, targeted at education.
1982: Commodore 64 released.
1984: Apple Macintosh released.
1984: Psion Organiser, 1984 added database, calculator, clock, diary, alarm clock, a-z keyboard. Programmable in OPL, became Symbian.
1985: LEGO/Logo (later Mindstorms) began, with hardware turtles drawing lines using a pen.
1989: Nintendo Game Boy released.
1989: Macintosh Portable released. First laptop with a GUI and mouse (trackball).
1990: ARM founded, as a joint venture of Apple, Acorn (BBC Micro) and VLSI.
1993: Apple Newton 1993 used handwriting recognition, custom ASIC, name PDA. Popular in medical field.
1996: Palm Pilot 1000 in 1996 brought dimensions down to 120x80x18 mm.
1996: TI-83 calculator got added to high school curriculum.
2000: Nokia 3310 mobile phone released, 126 million units sold.
2001: iPod brought 5 GB disk space, rapidly doubling. Rockbox custom firmware released for Archos in 2002,
iPodLinux in 2003.
2004: TI-84 calculator introduced, with USB OTG.
2004: OpenWRT firmware for routers.
2005: Arduino project began.
2007: iPhone decreased disk space compared to iPod but gained capacitive multi-touch screen.
2012: Raspberry Pi released, targeted at education.
2014: ESP8266 released.
2016: iPhone 7 finally exceeded storage of iPod Classic, but removed headphone jack, increased physical dimensions.
Embedded hacking involves hardware and software, which makes it hard to specialise. I took LEGO/Logo after school in 2000-2001, then extra ICT classes for IGCSE 2004-2005, then Computer Science for IB 2005-2007, and Electronic Systems Engineering in university 2007-2011. There's plenty more devices and emulators to explore!
Looks like a whole lot of fun! Suppose I could have jumped in, but by then I was away from needing the calculator, ah well.