Texas Instruments TI-74 BASIC programmable calculator

Description

Full name is TI-74 BASICALC. Very nice tool. And I say tool, because the TI-74 is not just a calculator. It comes with an industry strength plasic cover, and the whole thing feel heavy and strong. It's an engineering tool, not just a calculator.

Programming the TI-74 is easy, especially if you have some familiarity with BASIC. If you prefer Pascal, there is an optional Learn Pascal ROM module that has a very nice Pascal interpreter. Documentation is exellent, both for the calculator itself as for the modules and peripherals.

Performance index

The performance index listed in the specs above was calculated in the default BASIC programming mode of the TI-74. I also own the Learn Pascal module, so I thought it interesting to see if performance differed when using that. I used the following program to measure the performance:

100 PROGRAM perf;
110 VAR w,i:INTEGER; x:REAL;
115 BEGIN
120 FOR w:=1 TO 10 DO
130 BEGIN
140 FOR i:=1 TO 10 DO
150 BEGIN
160 x:=i;
170 x:=x+1;
180 x:=x-.0004567;
190 x:=x+70;
200 x:=x-69;
210 x:=x*7;
220 x:=x/11;
230 END (* i *)
240 x:=LOG(x);
250 x:=SIN(x);
260 x:=SQR(x);
270 x:=SQR(x);
280 END (* w *)
290 WRITELN(x);
300 END.

It turned out that the performance index when using Pascal comes to 20. Slightly less than the default BASIC value. Not surprising really, as there is probably some overhead from the translation from Pascal to native code.

Measured results:

Mode    Time   P.Index
BASIC   12.5s  27.2
PASCAL  16.6s  20.5

For reference, here is the listing of the BASIC program I used:

100 FOR w=1 TO 10
110 FOR i=1 TO 10
120 x=i
130 x=x+1
140 x=x-.0004567
150 x=x+70
160 x=x-69
170 x=x*7
180 x=x/11
190 NEXT
200 x=LOG(x)
210 x=SIN(x)
220 x=SQR(x)
230 x=SQR(x)
240 NEXT
250 PRINT x
260 PAUSE

Successor to the CC-40?

According to some sources , the TI-74 may be considered the successor to the legendary Texas Instruments CC-40

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