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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: 2) by toddestan on Sunday May 31 2020, @06:34AM (3 children)

    by toddestan (4982) on Sunday May 31 2020, @06:34AM (#1001292)

    Even in Physics eventually a calculator became less and less useful. In the first few semesters you're crunching numbers a lot but after that you're mostly solving equations symbolically. Perhaps the TI-89 series might have been some assistance, but I didn't have one of those. After my semester year in college I actually ditched the graphing calculator from high school and went back to a TI-30 Solar because when I did have to do some calculations it was plenty adequate.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:39PM (#1001349)

    I knew a guy when I was in graduate school for physics who was taking his Ph.D. written quals. For the exam we all had to clear our calculators, which he did. On the exam was a problem that he got stuck on involving differential equations or something. He programmed his calculator to numerically solve it (damn theorists). He passed the exam. I assume he got credit for that problem.

    These were the real TI calculators. They were (and are still) insanely useful.

  • (Score: 1) by TomTheFighter on Monday June 01 2020, @04:15PM (1 child)

    by TomTheFighter (9781) on Monday June 01 2020, @04:15PM (#1001747)

    >. .. went back to a TI-30 Solar because when I did have to do some calculations it was plenty adequate.

    Oh that brought back memories - I got through Trig for Engineering with a TI-31 Solar - couldn't afford one of those fancy graphing calculators.

    I still have that TI-31 on my desk - over 30 years old and it works like a champ !

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by toddestan on Monday June 01 2020, @11:29PM

      by toddestan (4982) on Monday June 01 2020, @11:29PM (#1001935)

      That TI-30 Solar served me well for a long time until one sad day I dropped it on the floor, putting a crack through the solar cell. It was sad watching the LCD fade knowing it wasn't coming back.

      I actually still have the calculator in a junk bin, should I manage to somehow acquire an appropriate solar cell to revive it.

      I also had a TI-36 Solar for a while (one of the older ones, with the single line display), which was a nice calculator, though I apparently no longer have it and I have no idea whatever happened to it.