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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: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @10:07PM (2 children)
TI has a seriously broken business model. Calculator hardware is quite expensive given the relatively limited power it actually has. These are very expensive devices that are targeted almost at a single market, which is schools. They rely on schools either purchasing large orders of calculators or requiring parents and students to do so. If TI made their devices more useful in other markets, they wouldn't rely on educators as their sole market.
There's also an issue of lazy teachers, who could write better exams that wouldn't be as conducive to cheating. I teach college classes occasionally and have started releasing the entire pool of multiple choice test questions to students before the exam. They get a random selection on their actual exam but are responsible for learning the entire pool. If they go through, look up the answers for themselves, and memorize the answers, I've forced them to learn the material at some point. Students don't get to use any materials on the exam, so there's no issue. Other times, I allow students to bring notes into the exam, but the entire exam is based on solving problems and applying their knowledge. If instructors can't write good exams, they share in the blame for the cheating.
I was a TI-Files staff member a long time ago. There were three big sites in the community at that time: ticalc.org, TI-Files, and Dimension-TI. Only ticalc.org has survived and TI-Files is sadly long defunct. I got a TI-89 within about a month of it being released and was very excited about improved support for assembly language programming.
On the TI-85, memory backups to a computer contained an entire image of the RAM. There was a "custom" menu that would allow users to add frequently used functions to a menu. This was actually implemented as pointers to addresses in memory. The backups were modified to add a string variable containing z80 instructions, and an entry was added to the custom menu to point to the address of the string variable. This allowed for the execution of arbitrary code on the calculator and was soon used to create shells like ZShell and Usgard that could run other string variables containing z80 code and provided other useful functionality. This simplified the process for users, allowing them to transfer strings with assembly language programs rather than a full memory backup when they wanted to add more programs. This was a hack, whereas newer models like the TI-83 and TI-89 officially supported assembly language programs and didn't require such hacks. TI was once very supportive of the community and was forward thinking enough to understand that assembly language developers were actually helping their business.
I don't recall anyone in the community having any interest in finding ways for students to cheat. We were mostly interested in finding creative ways to push the limits of the calculator hardware and the large majority of the software released was games. The small memory size on the TI-85 (~28K actually available to the user) was a limitation for more sophisticated games on the platform, but relatively small games like ztetris were still quite fun. The larger memory of the TI-89, the 68k processor, and the larger screen increased the complexity of games that developers could create. I don't think any of the big three sites actually had any interest in hosting software to help students cheat. Most of our software was actually games.
I used to frequently visit the big TI community IRC channels, which were #ti (mostly for ticalc.org back then) and #ti-files on EFNet. I don't ever recall there being any discussion of how to cheat with calculators. Most of it had nothing to do with TI calculators, and when we did talk about calculators, it wasn't about cheating in class. A lot of the time, it was responding to questions about the sites, programming, or helping users solve problems with their calculators. I still visit #tcpa occasionally to this day, where some members of the community still visit. It's a good community that's been very supportive and helpful to TI over the years. We're not interested in helping cheat on exams. Most of us have been out of school for a long time and still have some involvement because we enjoy it. This is a middle finger to a community that has written a lot of free software over almost three decades and helped to increase the popularity of TI's calculators.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @10:45PM (1 child)
TI calculator hardware is quite expensive because TI has ingenuously created their own monopoly market. The standardized tests allow calculators, but only approved ones (and notably, TI's are the approved models). Which means students are forced into buying a particular TI model off the approved list if they want a calculator to use on the standardized tests. Which means TI has created a forced monopoly market.
And how did TI's calculators end up on the standardized tests approved lists, why TI's marketing of course. TI pushed to get their calculators on the approved list, so they could then be the sole supplier of calculators for the tests. At which point, the student either pays TI's inflated price, or does without a calculator. And in this day and age, no student is going to pick the "do without" path.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:05AM
I understand that TI have a monopoly position in North America, but their calculators are a rarity in Europe. In the UK, Casio calculators are dominant, with a smattering of Sharp and various minority brands. Some schools might recommend a model to pupils/parents, but there's no manding one (with the possible exception of some private schools). Exam boards will specify features that aren't permitted on a calculator, as opposed to whitelisting specific calculators.
On the other hand, programmable calculators are virtually unheard of in high schools, so we've not got that software ecosystem to lose in the first place.