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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday May 30 2020, @07:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the skip-the-patch-for-now dept.

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


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @11:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @11:06PM (#1001206)

    I forgot to take a calculator to an exam once. It was quite liberating showing my workings in full. Managed a pass still. In many ways much prefer the exam with nothing but a pencil and a formula sheet, or even just the pencil, except they usually dumb those down to multiple choice.