Yeah, for these 16 years that I've been living, I entirely came to the conclusion that projects like "A Multifunctional Calculator" can get more and more boring, the deeper you dig into them. So in order not to give up on this, I decided to give my calculator idea a little break. Just until my muse visits me again. I took the liberty to redesign my calculator though. I removed the square root function, because the algorithm I used was not in it's "fully optimized" state and could only calculate integer values. I also added a better string support and LCD control. It still uses a similar design like the one Myke Predko suggested, with the only difference that it now can be "auto-cleared", as you'll see in the code and schematic I supplied here for you. Anyways, I decided to begin working on my notebook/tablet thingy (The Pic Based Computer). It looks really gorgeous now that it has a PC/AT keyboard connected to it, external ram and rs232 and all fully functional on a PIC18F452. Now I can concentrate on making the inner core of the notebook. But first... I've been reading so much stuff about LED matrices, so I couldn't resist to make one on my own. Just a little fun before going for "Da Big Stuff". The fun will consist of a Win32 GUI program telling the PIC which LEDs to light up and even send entire patterns, which will be stored in a EEPROM (4k), so when the PIC receives a "start" command from the PC(or a button is pushed), it'll start following this pattern to light up the LEDs. This can also be considered a training exercise since:
1. Will be writing/read from an EEPROM (I2C fun)
2. RS232... just training
3. Visual C++ coding and stuff
4. I'll control the matrix using the same 74HC164 serial register I used in the new design of the calculator.
Well, I'll be waisting no more time, gotta get to work :D Oh, and here's the code (
http://docs.google.com/View?docID=ddhwppvg_19cvhqhtff&revision=_latest) and the schematic of the calculator so far.
