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Don't Update Your TI-83 or TI-84 Calculator's Firmware:
It's weird to think about using a calculator in 2020, when just about everyone has a smartphone or laptop within reach, but Texas Instruments' calculators are still a popular (and often required) resource for students. The latest calculators are even capable of installing and running simple applications, which makes them an excellent learning tool for coders and hardware modders. (I even modded my TI calculator to run respectable facsimiles of Doom and Super Mario back in college.)
Unfortunately, Texas Instrument is removing support of the C assembly coding language in a new firmware update to crack down on cheating. And that means a lot of homebrew programs are either going to go away entirely or have to be converted to a much slower Python version—if that's even plausible.
The update affects the TI-84 Plus CE, TI-83 Plus CE-T, and the TI-83 Premium CE calculators. Texas Instruments says it's implementing the change to stop students from installing third-party software that circumvents the "exam mode" limitation on certain TI devices. Exam mode is designed to restrict certain functionality so students can complete their work without the help of extra features—cheating, basically.
[...] That said, TI-83 and TI-84 calculator firmware must be manually downloaded to your PC and updated over USB, so users who want to remain on the older version can do so by simply not installing the new firmware—but that's your only option.
What was the most interesting thing you created that ran on a calculator?
See also: TI removes access to assembly programs on the TI-83 Premium CE
(Score: 4, Interesting) by martyb on Saturday May 30 2020, @09:55PM (2 children)
When I started college, a TI-30 [wikipedia.org] was the most popular calculator. Basic math, single memory, some trig and some exponential square root stuff. LED display powered by a 9-volt battery. And relatively affordable at around $25. That was still a lot of money when minimum wage was only $2.65 per hour.
After seeing a classmate's TI-35 (IIRC), it didn't take long for me to get one, too. The neat thing was that it could be programed. Well, kinda-sorta. Start recording, do some key strokes, end recording. Enter a number and then replay the recording. I can't remember for certain, but I think 16 steps was the max. Using what was on the display and what was in memory provided two inputs. Though terribly limited, surprisingly complex things could be accomplished. Especially since this was around the time when the original TRS-80 was introduced and IBM was still years away from introducing its PC!
Quite by accident, a classmate and I were playing around with our calculators and noticed some occasional static on the radio station we were listening to. Took a bit of sleuthing, but we finally deduced that the LED display was spewing out RF noise. Some quick experimenting while running up and down the AM/FM dials found a suitably sensitive frequency.
Next up, we discovered that the number of lit segments affected the sound output through the radio. (These were classic 7-segment LED displays.) After some more experimenting, we were able to program the calculator to play a rudimentary rhythm by altering the display from "88888888" to "1" and back again. Woo Hoo! Actually, it sounded more like: buzz, pause, buzz buzz, pause. But we were still thrilled to pieces!
Context: there were no CD players or MP3s or digital songs of any kind at that time. So we were pretty amazed at what we could do. We wished even then for more memory so we could get longer 'songs'. If we'd known a bit more about hardware, there's a chance we could have been in on the ground floor of digital music. I had even correctly envisioned at that time that high-speed playing at different volumes would allow the recording and playing of any kind of sound... we were SO close!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @09:50PM (1 child)
Look junior, we were playing music on our IBM line printers WAY before that.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Monday June 01 2020, @10:57PM
Sounds interesting... how'd you do it? I presume it was on an IBM mainframe? The ones I'm familiar with (IBM/370) were all record oriented, so it probably wasn't just straight assembler code, right?
Wit is intellect, dancing.