TI-Basic Z80 Programming

This book covers the Z80 processor's version of TI-BASIC.

Overview

TI-BASIC is a simple programming language used on Texas Instruments (TI) graphing calculators. The language is quite simple, and integrates many normal graphing calculator commands (such as storing variables or graphing) into its code.

TI-BASIC is very easy to program, especially when it is compared with Assembly, which is the main other language that can be used to program TI graphing calculators. Also, programs written in TI-BASIC can have a small filesize, since the most common functions can be programmed using just one character (1-2 bytes) such as "If " or "Menu(". However, this makes execution of TI-BASIC programs very slow. because the calculator must read through and parse each line of code in a TI-BASIC program and then translate it into Assembly before actually executing it. Despite the crawling speed of TI-BASIC, it is appropriate for many simple programs.

Versions of TI-BASIC

The main versions of TI-BASIC in use today are the following two:

• The TI-BASIC that comes with the TI-89, TI 89 Titanium, TI-92, TI-92 Plus and Voyage 200 calculators. This is the more powerful version of TI-BASIC.

• The TI-BASIC that comes with the TI-83, TI-83+, TI-83+ Silver Edition, TI-84+ and TI-84+ Silver Edition calculators. This is a less powerful version of TI-BASIC than the previous one, but still can be used to make many different types of programs.

Please notice that within these two versions of TI-BASIC there are slight variations.

Table of Contents

This table of contents arranges the sections in the best order if you are trying to learn the language. However, if you already are familiar with TI-BASIC and wish to skip to a section, please do so.

1. Introduction
2. Necessary Items
3. Hello, World!
4. Basic Variables (Numbers, Strings, and Lists)
5. Output
6. Input
7. Program Basics
8. Advanced Variables (Characters, Equations, Matrices, Pictures, and Graph Databases)
9. Criteria Based Instructions (If, Then, Else & End)
10. getKey
11. Menus
12. Other CTL and I/O Commands
13. Screens
14. Error Messages
15. Tips, Tricks and Optimizations
16. Advanced Programming
17. Programming Games
18. Mathematical Finance Programming
19. Links
20. Appendix A: Instructions
21. Appendix B: Catalog

External Links

• http://www.ticalc.org/
• TI-Basic Developer
• http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/391/39193.html TI-83+/84+ BASIC Programming Tutorials

Learning and Programming TI-BASIC

The manual that comes with TI calculators can be used to learn TI-BASIC. The manual can also be downloaded from the TI web site in a PDF. See the links below.

• TI 83 (See Chapter 16)
• TI 83 Plus (See Chapter 16)
• TI 83 Plus Silver Edition (See Chapter 16)
• TI 84 Plus (See Chapter 16)
• TI 84 Plus Silver Edition (See Chapter 16)
• TI 89 (See Chapter 17)
• TI 89 Titanium (See Chapter 18)
• TI 92 Plus (See Chapter 17)
• Voyage 200 (See Chapter 18)