
TI removes access to assembly programs on the TI-83 Premium CE - dTal
https://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/14/149/149342.html
======
nullc
I'm really happy with the very well build swissmicros DM42 calculator:
[https://www.swissmicros.com/dm42.php](https://www.swissmicros.com/dm42.php)

It is inspired by the venerable HP42 and an e-ink like display that persists
when powered off, an arm cpu running at 24MHz when powered by a cr2032 (or
80MHz when on USB power). Both the display and the key action are a big
advantages over using a calculator app on a phone.

The software is entirely free software.

They will have a new model coming out in the next year or so which is on the
same hardware platform (but a different model because the key layout is
different) with an even more powerful software stack.

Unfortunately dedicated calculators are a seriously niche market, except for
education. And education results in weird user hostile features as well as
being extremely overpriced. (DM42 is also not super inexpensive, but at least
there its because its extremely well built and made in very small quantities).

A lot of really awesome things could be done but without a bigger market it's
hard to justify the development costs and manufacturing NREs.

~~~
neilpanchal
Thanks for the kind words. Regarding the build quality - we strongly believe
in buy-it-for-life philosophy, and the chassis is designed with repairability
in mind [1]. Battery life is also one of the top concerns for us and we don't
want our users to take the calculator out of the drawer after a long period
only to find that the battery is dead. We've had suggestions to add a color
screen or OLED display, but that would eat into the battery budget by a few
orders of magnitude.

We are also launching DM41X[2], about 100 units have been sent out for beta
testing and should be in production later this year.

We appreciate feedback and would love to hear from you: neil[@]swissmicros.com

[1] Teardown:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ong91Ji3iDk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ong91Ji3iDk)

[2] DM41X:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrU4sGWt45M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrU4sGWt45M)

~~~
pengaru
> Teardown:
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ong91Ji3iDk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ong91Ji3iDk)

That video doesn't strike me as particularly flattering.

I'm no calculator aficionado, but just watching it already had me experiencing
pangs of buyer's remorse and no money had even left my pocket.

Echoes of the clamshell sharp zaurus; a well built piece of hardware with very
poor software support relegating it to dust collector status.

~~~
onli
The reviewer is very enthusiastic about the calculator and loves that thing.
How can a teardown be more positive and flattering?

~~~
pengaru
Their enthusiasm more or less ends where the hardware ends and the software
starts.

Some demonstrated flaws from memory:

\- Inexplicable help file error right out of the hole

\- No way to actually display values using the exceptional precision because
of the software

\- Basically no included graphing capabilities despite having a pixel-
addressable e-ink display the buyer is no doubt paying extra for

\- Weird font rendering bug and seemingly pointless font scaling

\- No modal alphabetic keyboard entry when attempting to do some rudimentary
programming

~~~
neilpanchal
Just to shed some thoughts around not adding features - keep in mind that DM42
is a "homage" to the original HP42. If we go ahead and make major changes to
the UI (besides what we have already made to take advantage of the screen), it
is no longer a true to the aforementioned spirit. Graphing capabilities were
rudimentary on HP42S and you need a printer to plot. Similarly, DM42 has an IR
sensor and complete backwards compatibility with HP42S printer.

There is a deliberate attempt to _not_ add features, and to keep DM42
compatible with HP42S "interface". We've received strong feedback from our
users to not make major changes to the HP42S spec. One can just use HP42S
manual and everything should just work. It is the same with the key layout.

If you want to add features or mess around with the firmware, it is open
source. There is also an SDK that you can use to write your own firmware if
you wish.

Furthermore, there are some exciting projects to build a new RPN platform all
together - WP43 is one.

That said, all feedback is welcome and appreciated. Thank you.

~~~
pengaru
That's fair, like I said I'm no calculator aficionado and have zero prior
experience with the HP42. So I'm coming at it cold and those choices are
coming through as defects and an inability to make good use of the hardware
being purchased.

------
Ansil849
Wow, this is incredibly sad news.

One of my fondest memories with the TI was a chemistry instructor saying that
we were completely free to use any programs we wanted on examinations -- as
long as we coded the programs ourselves. This inspired me to create a fairly
comprehensive TI chemistry formula program, and my mates did likewise. It was
really a forward-thinking move that contrasted strongly with just a blanket
ban, as instead it fostered creativity. It is sad to me that future
generations will not be able to experience this.

~~~
Scaevolus
This isn't a ban on TI-BASIC, which is what most students use when programming
formulae and other helper programs.

~~~
hamandcheese
It’s common for exam proctors to require you clear all programs from your
calculator. I think the reason for banning native programs is that it was
trivial to spoof the memory clearing in a way that was difficult to detect.

~~~
avhon1
You can actually spoof the "RESET RAM" menu in TI-Basic, but only dedicated
students would do it.

~~~
Mattwmaster58
Was this because you would have to plot it line/pixel-by-line/pixel?

~~~
avhon1
Something like that. You'd have to plot all of the text in all the right
places, and also script the menu, delay, and keyboard response.

~~~
thanksforfish
Are exam proctors really auditing this to that level? I've been out of school
for a while, but I think I only remember the honor system being used.

~~~
avhon1
My calculator was never checked before standardized tests, but some math
teachers checked before giving class tests.

~~~
thanksforfish
Theres some interesting incentives for teachers administering standardized
tests to ignore cheating. Students who do well reflects well on the teacher
and the school. I wonder how schools report cheating to standardized test
administrators and what the rules are for scoring a cheater.

------
013a
I remember, in maybe 9th grade, after learning Newton's Method in a pre-calc
course, writing a TI-83 program to do N iterations of Newton's Method for me.
I showed it to my math teacher. He wasn't much of a nerd, and this was the
early 2000s so technology wasn't quite as prolific as it is today; he was
blown away.

Come exam time, we were allowed to use our calculators. I asked if I should
clear mine out given I had a program which could "cheat" (I was a teachers
pet). He said something to me (privately) along the lines of, "don't worry
about it. the way I see it, you've already proven to me you know the content."
Ironically, today I could probably piece together a TI83 assembly program from
memory, but I couldn't even tell you what Newton's Method does, let alone how
to do it. Not sure what lesson to glean from that.

I remember eating lunch one day, maybe a year or so later, in his classroom
with some friends, and he was browsing around the internet trying to find a
job I'd like in math. Looking back, I find it funny that he was landing on
things like "actuarial science" and "accounting" instead of the obvious. I
think that was his way of trying to make up for the piss-poor guidance
counseling in my school of 80 people in the middle of nowhere. I ended up
wasting a semester in Computer Engineering doing CAD and coding MatLab before
a professor took me aside and basically said "you're finishing these matlab
assignments faster than my grad students would. Are you sure you don't
actually want to do Computer Science?"

It sucks to see this. The accessibility of coding today has never been better,
so I'm not going to pretend like this is a doomsday thing for helping kids get
into the field, but it did have power in its ubiquity. Teaching computer
science in high schools isn't a tenth as effective as students coding up a
program to make their math classes easier, or modding CounterStrike after
hours, or "hacking" the school computer labs to play Halo with their friends.
Technology, and the ability to shape it to help us, should be ubiquitous. It
shouldn't be thrown out the window just so one teacher can more easily proctor
a hundred tests instead of twenty.

~~~
gameswithgo
newtons method is mathematically informed binary search

~~~
MereInterest
Close, and a good intuition for well-behaved problems. Unfortunately, Newton's
method only remembers the location of the current point, rather than of two
points surrounding the target value. This can result in some pathological
cases where Newton's method fails to converge, or gets into an infinite loop.

------
wgetch
This is unfortunate, assembly programs were the strongest aspect of the TI
homebrew community. Some really great games and applications were made
possible by native binaries on the older TI calculators. A couple of details I
found in another article[1]:

\- The new OS prevents the calculators from being downgraded

\- The OS prevents running Asm/C programs, only Basic (and on some editions
Python) programs are allowed

\- Applications can still be installed if signed by approved TI vendors

Sounds like the TI homebrew community is about to get splintered. You'll have
the jailbreakers fighting for code execution, but this could easily end up a
small underground operation mirroring other jailbreak efforts. It could become
too much of a hassle to get asm programs back (custom OS?), if so most people
will accept the limitations and move on. At least there's still Basic and
Python, if nothing else.

[1] [https://www.cemetech.net/news/2020/5/949/_/ti-removes-
asmc-p...](https://www.cemetech.net/news/2020/5/949/_/ti-removes-asmc-
programming-from-ti-83-premium-ce)

~~~
saagarjha
This is basically just a repeat of how other platforms locked down code
execution on their devices. Hopefully TI is incompetent enough to make
jailbreaking trivial, but it opens up a cat-and-mouse game…

~~~
kick
TI is fairly competent overall. That said, maybe the bottom 10% get sent to
the calculator division, given that it's barely moved since 1980...

~~~
dsjimi
Less than 5% of their revenue is calculators, and much less than 5% of their
R&D or engineering budgets. It's an incredibly small part of their business.

~~~
epanchin
5% of revenue requiring much less than 5% of engineering time sounds like an
awesome part of a business. Hardly small, either.

~~~
goatinaboat
It serves the purpose of exposing future engineers to the TI brand during a
formative period too

------
stuntkite
TI's strangle hold on the education market is stupid. Anyone that's looking
for an affordable ($99)and modern calculator, check out the Numworks. It's
fantastic. It does all the normal things a calculator should do and comes with
a Python interpreter out of the box. Check out their simulator[0]. Also the
hardware and software are open source[1].

[0] [https://www.numworks.com/simulator/](https://www.numworks.com/simulator/)
[1] [https://github.com/numworks](https://github.com/numworks)

~~~
pests
Is it accepted on tests?

~~~
Allezxandre
I don't know for other countries, but as for France, it's compliant with the
exam-mode that all calculators must comply to for national exams.

So I can't say for your specific case, but if you're a teacher, at least this
feature exists and you can use it with your students.

By the way, even the iPhone has some apps compliant with this feature, where
you're basically locked into the App. If you do manage to leave the App (i.e.
by force restarting your phone), you void the exam start timestamp that the
App saved

------
EvanAnderson
Removing an advertised feature of a product in a firmware update? That reminds
me of OtherOS[1] and Sony.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS)

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
Is that legal?

~~~
kube-system
Sony paid out on a class-action lawsuit over it.

~~~
musicale
In spite of having a launch model PS3 I wasn't able to claim my $9 of PSN
credit or whatever; iirc you had to prove you had installed linux before a
firmware update vaporized it.

------
joshstrange
ticalc.... I spent so many hours on their forums in high school. It's one of
the first online communities I was super-active in. I did a TON of TI-BASIC
programming and it's how I got my start programming. There are even 1-2 of my
old BASIC programs on ticalc that I uploaded over a decade ago.

I never got into assembly much because it required a a computer and I could
code and run BASIC on the calculator itself. I remember a few ASM programs you
could drop on your calculator and then call them from your BASIC programs. So
certain things that could be done faster in ASM were all put together in a
"library" that you could use to speed up your BASIC programs (most were visual
in nature, clear screen, draw sprite, etc). I still have my TI84+ SE from high
school, I really love that calculator.

~~~
avhon1
You can actually enter ASM code on the calculator, but it is very limited, and
non-trivial programs are extremely tedious to enter.

[http://tibasicdev.wikidot.com/asm-command](http://tibasicdev.wikidot.com/asm-
command)

~~~
joshstrange
Interesting, I remember the "ASM(" command to run those helper libraries but
yeah, the issues around trying to write ASM on the calculator would have been
a non-starter for me (both back them and now lol):

> Using AsmPrgm is the only built-in way to create assembly programs on the
> calculator, and it's not very convenient. To use it, after AsmPrgm itself,
> you must type in the hexadecimal values (using the numbers 0-9, and the
> letters A-F) of every byte of the assembly program. Even for assembly
> programmers, this is a complicated process: unless you've memorized the
> hexadecimal value of every assembly command (which is about as easy as
> memorizing the hexadecimal value of every TI-Basic token) you have to look
> every command up in a table.

~~~
monocasa
Even more than that, computing the branch offsets by hand is tedious and error
prone. You remember the important opcodes pretty quickly, but recomputing the
branches every time you modify the program is a huge pain.

~~~
a1369209993
Usually you'd pad the program with NOPs during development to keep each basic
block X-byte-aligned. Still a pain, but less of one.

------
simias
I got into programming almost 20 years ago by coding on my TI-89, first in
BASIC and later in ASM and C. Sad to see this platform closing down more,
although on the other hand I'm also surprised to see that these devices are
still relevant given how overpriced and under-powered they are by today's
standards.

~~~
jgalt212
It's been hard to make an underpowered calculator for 30+ years. What
computationally intensive tasks does one even try to attempt on a calculator?

I do remember IRR calcs on an HP-12C taking a few seconds, or so. And that
machine is not cheap either.

That being said, who's running IRR on a pocket calculator?

~~~
saagarjha
> What computationally intensive tasks does one even try to attempt on a
> calculator?

Back in high school I regularly hit integrations that took minutes to do on my
TI-89.

~~~
jgalt212
must have been some pretty big integrals, these examples in exact form seem to
be close to instant.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoDkeg166xU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoDkeg166xU)

maybe not the TI-89 which ran 68K processor.

~~~
saagarjha
Those are all fairly simple, I'm talking much bigger stuff. (I actually had a
Titanium, but it also has a 68k.)

------
saagarjha
This is really sad and a huge about face from the TI-83 Plus, which let you
program in assembly _on the calculator itself_ (fun fact: I wrote a CTF
challenge based around this, [https://github.com/saagarjha/ictf-
carprey](https://github.com/saagarjha/ictf-carprey)). I’m not looking forward
to the next generation of students being stuck with TI-BASIC unless they
“jailbreak” their calculators…

------
tehwebguy
Oh wow, ticalc.org still has the same header and color scheme as it did in
2001 (or 2002?), I used to check this site constantly in high school to
download new games (including a mind-blowing Link's Awakening port demo which
sadly never was finished)

Check it out, those menu buttons at the top use javascript to simulate CSS
`:hover` because at the time IE6 didn't support it for non-link elements!

    
    
        <th onmouseover="mOvr(this);" onmouseout="mOut(this);" onclick="mClk(this);" style="cursor: default; background-color: rgb(255, 238, 204);">

------
transitivebs
I released dozens of TI-basic and TIGCC apps back in the day and this is a
very, very sad turn of events.

The biggest advantage TI has for attracting new developers is that their
platform is ubiquitous for high schoolers. This is really amazing for adoption
and it's how I got started with programming back in the day.

I hope this trend doesn't continue.
[https://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/authors/78/7869.html](https://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/authors/78/7869.html)

------
jrockway
I assume they did this because of pressure from standardized test
administrators. That other article from today about universities phasing out
standardized tests is bad news for TI, because nobody would choose their
calculators on technological merits. With standardized tests gone, there is no
reason to pay $200 for 1 cent microcontroller and a 3 cent screen. Now kids
can learn mathematics with something like Mathematica; rich graphics, smart
algebraic expansion/simplification, etc.

(Like many others, I have fond memories of programming my TI-80, TI-83, and
TI-89... but I also got to use Mathematica at school and kind of wondered why
these calculators existed then. I got so much out of animating and exploring
everything. Waiting 10 seconds for a TI-80 to graph a parabola was just not as
exciting after using that.)

------
sevenf0ur
Does anyone know what might be the Youtube video that the article suggests
kicked off this change?

------
gxqoz
As someone who widely appreciated being able to have a calculator out in some
classes to play Assembly games in classes this is sad news. That said, I can't
recall using an Assembly program for any legitimate use. Are there real apps
out there a student would use that are written in Assembly?

By the way, my favorite TI-83 Assembly game was Uncle Worm, a fun variant on
snake that lets you move in all directions. I even made a Windows port.
[https://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/96/9683.html](https://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/96/9683.html)

~~~
swiley
In college I wrote a quick program to plot 3D curves and surfaces, a lot of my
classmates used it. I would have written it in assembly if it were possible to
put an assembler on the calculator easily because basic was almost too slow.

------
analognoise
Hey everyone, since we're on the topic -

Is there an open source computer algebra system designed to run on one of
these microcontroller-level devices that might serve as a replacement for the
math capabilities?

Something at least as good as DERIVE, and doesn't resort to Python - something
barest of metal?

Because I've always wanted to make a calculator...

~~~
nsajko
I do not know much about it, but I remember Giac being hacked onto the
Numworks Epsilon software. Maybe check out Numworks, too, I am going to make a
comment now about it here, too.

[https://www-fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr/~parisse/giac.html](https://www-
fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr/~parisse/giac.html)

Seemingly relevant thread found by a quick Web search: [https://xcas.univ-
grenoble-alpes.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?t=69...](https://xcas.univ-grenoble-
alpes.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?t=694)

~~~
analognoise
Thank you. This is exactly what I was looking for!

------
tyingq
Interesting that a vendor is securing access to Z80 assembler in 2020.

~~~
simias
Unless things have changed since my high school years it's a Motorola 68k CPU,
not a Z80.

~~~
wtallis
I think it's 68k for the TI-89 and up, and Z80 for the lower models.

~~~
saagarjha
The eZ80, I believe, which is backwards compatible but clicked higher and with
24-bit arithmetic.

------
stevebmark
This sucks :( having a little mini battery powered computer with insane
capabilities like running a separate operating system was a great entry into
tech for many of us

------
qubex
I’d like to take the opportunity to recommend the HP Prime G2 (for those of
you who, like myself, appreciate the flexibility of a reasonably-powered CAS)
and the NumWorks (which, when loaded with the Omega fork of the open-source
Epsilon firmware) provides excellent functionality in very minimalist package
and even supports CAS (through the easy installation of khiCAS).

~~~
boricj
I'm a contributor to Epsilon and Omega. It's too early to guess how much of a
backlash this will generate, but calculator forums are extremely pissed right
now. TI completely destroyed any goodwill they had remaining at this point.

I'm not sure how this will unfold, but they've pissed off a fair number of
smart people that know their calculators inside and out. I expect jailbreaks,
boycotts and people switching to other platforms fairly quickly.

~~~
qubex
I find the NumWorks to be a lovely little calculator but Omega really needs to
provide some serious symbolic ( _i.e._ ‘CAS’) functionality. It’s all fair and
square that the official Epsilon firmware doesn’t feature CAS to appease the
examination boards, but it’s a feature that is pretty key for a more
sophisticated crowd. No algebraic computation? No symbolic differentiation and
integration?! That’s really quite disappointing.

~~~
boricj
There is support for giac as an external app, the port is named KhiCAS. Flash
a firmware with external app support (Omega typically) and then use
[https://zardam.github.io/nw-external-apps/](https://zardam.github.io/nw-
external-apps/) to transfer apps. Right now the current external app system is
a glorified proof-of-concept when compared to the TI/Casio ecosystem, but it
does work.

One cannot distribute epsilon with giac integrated since their licenses are
incompatible (GPL3 vs CC-BY-NC-SA), hence the external app workaround.
NumWorks could negotiate a commercial license, but there has been no sign of
this so far.

------
mycall
In the world of Matlab, python, Octave and Wolfram Alpha, why bother with the
TI-83 still?

~~~
scottLobster
Because schools aren't about to let students use phones/laptops during exams,
and not every student has readily available access to the internet.

Also on occasion I need to do some simple plotting/multi-step math and my old
high school TI-83 in the desk drawer is simply more convenient than firing up
a Mathematics suite and looking up the arcane commands to get it to show what
I actually want.

But for professional use, yeah there are better tools.

~~~
chongli
That's silly. None of my (I'm a math major) university calculus courses (calc
1, calc 2, calc 3, differential equations) allowed calculators on quizzes or
exams. Graphing calculators are a zombie technology kept alive by completely
bogus, artificial means.

There's no reason to use a calculator on a properly-designed calculus exam. We
were doing everything from Taylor series to triple integrals without them.
Teaching kids to rely on a calculator from a young age severely limits their
ability to develop the basic arithmetic "muscle memory" (for lack of a better
term) needed to manipulate equations quickly in more advanced math classes.
It's a real shame.

~~~
drdaeman
But what's the value of this arithmetic muscle memory, in a world of
ubiquitous computing?

As long as you don't treat this computing as magic that _somehow_ solves your
math problems (hah, true I was guilty of that when I was a school kid), but is
fully aware about how it does it (the algorithm) and just let the machine do
the boring bits.

~~~
jeffbee
Are you joking? Number sense is hugely useful in daily life. What if I have a
recipe for three servings but five dinner guests? If I just passed milepost
472 and I average 55 miles per hour, how long will it take me to reach Mexico?
How many bottled liters of water can I fit in this box? How much is the 1.35%
annual property tax on a million-dollar house, per month? You really want to
whip out your laptop for all that?

~~~
dTal
>How much is the 1.35% annual property tax on a million-dollar house, per
month? You really want to whip out your laptop for all that?

I'll bite. In what scenario would it be useful to do this calculation in my
head?

~~~
jeffbee
You're trying to figure out if you can afford that house based on your monthly
pay?

------
physicsguy
I find it incredible that these calculators are even allowed in exams. In the
UK, for University, we were allowed at most a Casio fx series scientific
calculator, nothing more sophisticated. At A-Level (pre-college) you were
allowed very basic graphical calculators but I knew of nobody that bought one
and they were seen as being pointless.

------
lxe
That is a sad news. What a trip down memory lane though... I remember since I
discovered that TI-83 is much more powerful than simply running BASIC
programs, I've been spending most of my free time on TICALC. I remember
installing a gameboy emulator that used some neat tricks to make TI-83's
monochrome display render 4-shade greyscale. I think there was a Doom port.
There's been a way to load and play rudimentary music through the IO port.
TICALC was/is a treasure. I wrote and published a simple sprite and asm editor
which since has been deleted. I had a z80 opcode table pretty much memorized
so I can try writing small native programs in hex directly on the calculator.
I think it helped me pave my life path for the next 20 years.

------
markus92
Weren't these devices utterly broken because the private RSA key was actually
refactored? Or is this a different type.

There's some wonderful software for these calculators out there. Even a
functional Gameboy emulator exists, used it to play Pokemon during math
classes back in the days!

~~~
codys
The TI-84 Premium/Plus CE uses a larger RSA key that has not been factored.

~~~
imglorp
Well that sounds like a challenge. Got it handy?

~~~
colejohnson66
It’d be nice if the bitcoin community put their brute forcing power towards
something meaningful like brute force factoring of RSA keys. Sadly, that
doesn’t make money.

~~~
imglorp
It's be real nice if PoW was protein folding, or SETI matches, or anything
else that benefitted humanity instead of random speculators.

~~~
npongratz
It can be! Hasn't worked so well in practice, however:

[https://foldingcoin.net/](https://foldingcoin.net/)

Not much going on there... seems the last on-chain transaction happened about
a month ago:

[https://xchain.io/asset/FLDC](https://xchain.io/asset/FLDC)

------
birdyrooster
> the new, upcoming chapters of a still ongoing story :)

I love this spirit. Glad to see it will continue with or without TIs blessing.
I have been using ticalc.org since I was a teenager and calculator enthusiasm
is and was a great way for kids to get interested in software engineering.

------
frob
I don't see this being a huge hurdle to programs to help with problem solving.
Back in the aughts, I would regularly write programs to solve basic kinematic
equations in basic and distribute them to my fellow classmates under the
blessing of the instructor. I got to reinforce my mental models of kinematics
and I removed some hurdles for my fellow students who were good at problem
solving and rearranging variables but weaker at math. Ultimately, I learned so
much from that class.

------
Causality1
TI calculators are a racket. They begged, bribed, and threatened their way
into being the standard for educators and used that monopoly position to avoid
competition and innovation. It's why a TI-84, a device with a $15
manufacturing cost, costs the student $130.

[https://youtu.be/zoGl8-Wc-L0](https://youtu.be/zoGl8-Wc-L0)

------
javert
Does anybody know of a powerful calculator model (e.g. multi-line display like
a graphing calculator) that has the ability to display commas out of the box?

For example, if the result is 1,998,241 it should display that way---not
1992241.

I don't usually need powers of ten notation.

I don't mind adjusting settings, but I don't want to have to download stuff to
make it do this.

------
hedora
I wonder how hard it would be to build a software-compatible TI calculator
clone.

They haven’t exactly innovated in this space in the last quarter century, but
it was a nice product back in the day. The bill of materials for a modern
version of these couldn’t be more than a few dollars.

I wish copyright terms were shorter.

------
mekael
It’s strange to read comments about people “cheating” using graphing
calculators, as I can’t remember a single time where one would have helped me
in a single class. That might be because I majored in maths and everything at
that level is abstract ?

------
nsxwolf
My friend and I started a little "demoscene" on our TI-85s in high school,
trying to outdo each other with little graphics demos... this is sad.

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data_ders
RIP. My first program was a Pythagorean formula solver. I probably spent more
time playing games and programming on my TI83 than actually doing math

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andrewstuart
Anyone know of any other devices using the eZ80 that can be purchased now and
are available (i.e. not retired)?

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frellus
No issues, so long as you can still amuse your friends by typing: 6006135

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saagarjha
googies?

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blitmap
This is the only reason to buy these calculators.

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throwaheyy
What next, a TI App Store?

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jeegsy
I think you might be right!

