Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: Jiuyu 2077

As one of the "imperial three" in the calculator industry, Casio launched the first functional calculator fx-1 in 1972.

After entering China in 1997, Casio took deep roots in the Chinese market. In 2003, Casio sold the fx-82ms model function calculator in China, which directly affected the first generation of students and domestic pirated calculator manufacturers.

The old fx-82ms that countless students are familiar with, in most people's impression, this kind of scientific calculator appears as an educational tool. However, in the era of underdeveloped and unpopular smartphone technology more than a decade ago, students in schools, bound by a ban on electronic entertainment, quietly set their sights on calculators.

1. When I was in primary school, there were electronic products with all kinds of entertainment functions around me. In addition to the common game handheld, there are also the famous Noah boat, Shu Lang this kind of learning machine.

Although these products can be held in their hands to "explore the unknown" under the pretext of learning at home, these products are also confiscated when they are brought into school, so they naturally give up the idea of playing a game or two at recess for fear of equipment loss.

Calculators are absolutely safe devices. In 2005, Casio listed es series calculators in mainland China, which is different from the ordinary liquid crystal calculator with four operations (that is, the one used by students to sell vegetables) and the previous generation of fx-82ms that has a lattice screen that can support four lines of natural writing and can display printed mathematical symbols. It is a powerful function calculator (function machine for short).

One summer in 2012, according to the regulations of the junior high school entrance examination in our province, students were allowed to bring calculators into the examination room. To this end, my father bought me a Casio fx-82es plus.

The different way of display made me think about this device at that time. Using only mathematical symbols to piece together a character painting satisfied most of my imagination of calculator entertainment at that time-until one day, I saw an article entitled "Calculator can also play the three Kingdoms?" The article "players are so talented".

Seeing this title, I was immediately attracted to the past. After all, the killing of the three Kingdoms was really prosperous at that time. It would be nice to be able to legally use electronic devices to kill the three Kingdoms in school.

The principle of the calculator is as follows: the random number generating function of the function machine is used to simulate the card extraction, and the matrix is used to record the card number. For example, using a random number to generate the number 5 represents a common kill, and then the number is stored in the handcard area of the matrix, so that the game can be played by pen and paper recording.

In the news pictures at that time, I used the matrix function of 991es to store data. unfortunately, my 82es plus did not support the matrix function, which made me scratch my head at that time. In fact, the random number generator is the core of the game. I, who didn't know this, began to look for the "upgrade road" of calculators on the Internet.

two。 The calculator that upgrades the matrix feature is an advanced version of fx-82es: fx-991es.

As for the 82es whose price was only a few dozen yuan at that time, the 991es with a price of more than 200 yuan deterred most of the student party, and obviously I was one of them. With the urgent need for matrix functions and the lack of money, I have a growing desire to "evolve" the 82es plus in my hands.

How does 991es, which has eight computing functions, upgrade 82es to 991es?

According to the general idea, when the cheap version of the calculator is made, it will be castrated on the hardware compared to the advanced version.

But Casio is no ordinary company. At the chip and motherboard process level, there was little difference between the early 82es and 991es. In the old version of 82es a, because the control circuit was exposed, users even need to scrape off the p3 contact in the motherboard and apply the p0 contact with a pencil to permanently upgrade the 82es to 991es, which is identical in function and operation.

This way of upgrading is called "hard promotion" by insiders. The popularity of hard rise made Casio immediately reflect the reasons for the recent abnormal sales of 82es, and then fixed the "hard rise" loophole in the b version of 82es.

But it just changed the motherboard.

This seems to be a declaration of war by Casio against enthusiasts who find hard-promoted communities. When the motherboard was changed, we messed with the chip-smart community enthusiasts immediately began to explore the new b version of 82es.

There are no natural-written ms models and a-version es function machines before, and the community has long studied the programs on their chips.

People who often play games may know that computers will overflow anomalies, and calculators will also have them. Researchers in the calculator community have found that by entering a lot of abnormal mathematical formulas (such as many "/" or "Ans" symbols) by keystrokes, the calculator overflows into the abnormal mode, and then enters a specific width character in the abnormal mode to upgrade the 82es.

The method of entering an upgrade instead of hardware modification is called "soft upgrade", and its method is also named "8 upgrade 21" method by the author. A soft upgrade does not permanently upgrade the machine, but because of this, students who swiftly press their fingers on the keyboard to enter the "upgrade secret book" during each upgrade will feel similar to being a computer hacker.

The discovery of the soft upgrade of the "mantra" (pictured from fx-es (ms)) caused a sensation at the time, just like entering the Kolomi Secret Book in the original game of Contra: you can make a strong profit by tapping the keyboard in sequence. Such a wonderful upgrade process is very entertaining compared to the result. This discovery directly announced the failure of the second revision of Casio.

Unfortunately, Casio, which has suffered too much, is now completely blocking all upgrade paths, and trying to upgrade on today's new machines is a thing of the past. Casio's profit-seeking behavior as a manufacturer left community enthusiasts helpless, and the road to upgrading has since been blocked.

However, the upgrade is just one of the fruits of the abnormal exploration of function calculators.

3. Explore built-in programs that are subject to a completely closed source of the function machine. If you want to develop a new way of playing on the function machine, you can only develop it from a non-programming point of view. Due to the discovery of the non-programming mode of exception, it has found a breakthrough for enthusiasts to find new ways to play.

The first is the explosion of the plane. Bursting machine refers to the abnormal display caused by the calculator unable to achieve normal calculation function after entering the abnormal state. This abnormal display will make the screen appear a variety of conditions, such as large-scale display usually does not appear pattern, full-screen flicker and so on.

And because the 991 series function machines have the characteristics of solar panels, the full-screen flicker will change with the intensity of the sun. The explosion machine can also be divided into soft and hard. The soft explosion machine is like a soft upgrade. After entering the abnormal mode by keystroke, the explosion machine is realized by inputting the key sequence of the explosion machine. On the other hand, the hard explosion machine needs to short-connect the machine hardware to realize the abnormal display.

An explosion machine like a broken screen (pictured by fx-es (ms)) once upon a time, the use of the explosion machine may only be to "break" students' calculators, but it laid the foundation for more game development later.

Enthusiasts find that the explosion will show an abnormal pattern, can the pattern be controlled? After continuous attempts, some people have come to the conclusion that as long as the input of overflow characters before entering the explosion machine is controlled, the effect of controlling the output of abnormal patterns can be achieved.

This is another amazing discovery that allows the calculator to output all the desired patterns in addition to the required display of mathematical symbols and letters. This kind of play is called "spelling" by enthusiasts. By spelling, you can maximize the use of the pixels on the function machine screen to display all kinds of patterns you want.

The romance of expressing love with a calculator (picture from fx-es (ms) post bar) has reached a new peak in the function machine community through Scrabble. Countless enthusiasts share their character paintings almost every day, and the principles and advanced ways of playing various anomalies have even been summarized into detailed research results in the calculator community.

The research results of fx-es (ms) Tieba 4. Conclusion with the passage of time, the students who were once keen on exploring calculator play gradually grow up, and the fresh blood is decreasing day by day, the domestic calculator player community is gradually lonely.

After smartphones have strong enough scientific computing applications, only exams are left for scientific calculators. The once lively communication place has become silent, and the originally active community members have gradually left here.

Growth is force majeure, and the development of the times is also force majeure.

Today, with the popularity of smartphones and more and more entertainment products, students have access to more than a small lattice screen. Although Casio has launched various Chinese versions of function machines in the past 10 years in order to maintain the Chinese market, the Chinese version does not bring as many enthusiasts as the Chinese version of the game. more calculator owners are still focused on their own functions.

After all, the pretty fx-991CN X calculator is a computing tool, not an entertainment tool, and the fall of the functional calculator community is inevitable. But looking back on that glorious time, calculator enthusiasts rebelled against developers and devoted themselves to hobbies, and countless enthusiasts were able to gather in one place to share their love, no different from the gamer community. Perhaps in such a huge Internet, the voice of calculator enthusiasts is not worth mentioning, but it has really become a gorgeous part of that era.

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