fx-9860gii-2 brief introduction

[Mjim]

(11-23-2019 02:42 PM)Eddie W. Shore Wrote:  I hope to see Python expanded on the fx-CG50. Currently, it's kind of limited.

I downloaded the emulator first to try it out, and I was pretty surprised at all the functions missing from the math library; but I was still impressed that I could run some basic programs that I had made in Python on it.

(11-23-2019 03:14 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  

(11-23-2019 02:42 PM)Eddie W. Shore Wrote:  I hope to see Python expanded on the fx-CG50. Currently, it's kind of limited.

According to the last post in this thread, Casio is at least planning to add graphics capabilities.

I didn't use Python beyond a basic ability, but being able to graph stuff is something I did use. I guess there isn't much graphing to be done without pylab; fingers crossed more libraries (hopefully full ones) make their way to MicroPython. There aren't any unofficial, but more complete ports of it are there for SH architecture?

On another note, my fx-9750GII (9860GII firmware) is now permanently dead (those benchmarks I posted above are among the last things it ever did). I opened it up to see if I could fix the squeaky navigation button, but the ribbon connecting the button PCB and CPU/Flash/LCD module was pretty fragile and got broken. I spent a day or so fixing it (80pin IDE ribbon cable worked best), but my shaky hands created a couple of lifted tracks, so I needed to reroute a couple of traces.

Somehow it worked after that (so I was able to do the benchmarks), but I wasn't happy with the shocker of a job, so decided to touch up those solder pads, but in the process ended up dropping a big blob of flux across the flash pins, that I didn't pick up until it was too late (First couple of times it powered on, but the keyboard wouldn't work, then it would power on and off immediately, then it wouldn't power on. Finally the last time I saw the screen was when I plugged it into the computer; but even that doesn't happen anymore). I'm not absolutely certain, but I'm pretty sure that it saves to flash memory as soon as the power switches off, and it corrupted the flash memory. The blob was pretty much covering pins 9 to 17 of the spansion chip; and while I'm not very good with electronics, it looks like that was not a great place to short out from the datasheet.

The Calculator to be fair was already broken when I got it many years ago (only $5), but I managed to fix the problems on it after spotting a fracture on the board which had cut some of the tracks on the keyboard PCB. It served me very well with some of my study materials over the years; and I grew to appreciate it how useful a tool it was. For example it made solving stress-strain matrices with 6 unknowns really easy (Just linear elastic behaviour ie Hooke's Law is as far as I got with that topic). Also learned recently about the great "Sequence" and "nSolve" functions, both of which are super useful (nSolve unlike solve will return up to 10 values over a range if there are multiple solutions). Shame to see it go, as I was rather fond of it. RIP