User:Bzimmerly

05/29/2010 - Bill Zimmerly (aka "WBZ") joined the WikiTI community.

Status:

WBZ is a retired computer programmer and writer who goes by the nickname of "the Geezer Gadget Geek."

Brief but relevant history:

I've been a computer/calculator fanatic since the early 1970's and own a substantial collection of great machines - TI-89, TI-55, HP-41CV, HP-41CX, HP-71B, HP-50G, HP-12C, HP-11C, and many more. I recently purchased from Amazon a TI-84 Plus Silver-Edition and as of the writing of this posting have not received it yet.

In the early 1980's, I programmed Medical Terminals for EDS in Z80 assembler. I contributed to EDS's custom terminal OS by adding drivers for the AMD 9511 and 9512 co-processors and hooks into DPL (the HLL language used for programming the terminals) to support hardware floating point via those chips. I loved Z80 assembler back then and have longed to work again with such a fun processor. When I found out that the heart of the TI-84 series was the Z80, I placed an order and began studying what the web had to offer for such hardware.

Plans:

The first task I plan on taking on (when I receive my TI-84) is to port zForth (my version of FORTH) to the calculator such that terminal sessions can run on the calculator from the built-in keyboard/display *AND* on terminal programs like minicom on Linux via the calculator's USB cable. I don't know how long it will take to accomplish this, but who cares (?) after all, I'm retired. ;) It will be freely shared with the community in hopes to generate interest and provide others with a fun tool like this.