TheLastMillennial

I did something like this to my TI-84 Plus CE graphing calculator a while ago because it charges from mini-USB, yuck! I just happened to use the same coil as LTT. It's legitimately extremely useful now that the USB port is broken and can't be used for charging.

You guys will love to know that the TI-84 Plus CE family only costs 75 Euro ($88 USD) in Europe where there's actually competition among calculator companies. I updated the topic with news from TI that they will be keeping the charging LED on the school property versions so teachers won't be out of luck. However, regular TI-84 Plus CEs will require you to turn on the calculator to check the charge level.

Summary For the past 10 years, TI has included an LED on their rechargeable calculators, similar to smartphones from yesteryear, which indicates when the calculator is charging or done charging without needing to turn it on. It's quite useful for teachers who have dozens of classroom calculators all charging in a dock. It allows them to quickly identify which calculator is done charging without turning on every single one until a charged on is found. It's also quite useful for troubleshooters, like me. For example, if the LED immediately turns green when the calculator is plugged in, that indicates there's something wrong with the battery and it needs to be replaced. Unfortunately, it's speculated that in the name of saving a few cents per unit and maximizing profit on the TI-84 Plus CE Python, Texas Instruments has released a new hardware revision (revision T) which does not include this useful LED. My thoughts This isn't nearly as bad as when TI senselessly removed Assembly programming back in May of 2020. However, it's still a shame this $150 calculator doesn't even have a convenient LED anymore. As someone who has to diagnose and repair calculator software and hardware issues several times a week, this will make my job more difficult. If someone's calculator doesn't turn on, I'll have no idea if it's a simple battery issue or something more serious. I'll be forced to recommend a battery replacement even though I could be wasting someone's time and money. Sadly, TI doesn't really care about my opinions, but they do care about teacher's opinions. I'm curious to see if teachers will push back against this change and if they do, will TI reverse it? EDIT: TI has confirmed that they will not be removing the charging LED on School Property (classroom sets) calculators. So teachers can still tell which calculators are charged in charging stations. This means it's highly unlikely non-school property calculators will ever get the LED back. Here's a fun tidbit: If you want to know what hardware revision a calculator is, just look for the date code on the back. In engraved text, you'll see something like L-0519M. The last letter (M) is the hardware revision. Calculators with hardware revisions earlier than T will have a charging LED. hardware revision T and later will not have one. Sources https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=263762 https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=295417

New news! The Nspire jailbreak, Ndless, has just been updated for not only the old Nspire CX, but the new Nspire CX II as well! It has been just over 3 years since the last Ndless release so it's super exciting to see another one after so long! You can learn more or install it here: https://github.com/ndless-nspire/Ndless Although this wasn't related to the TI-84 Plus family, it's still related to the whole slew of jailbreaks being released so I decided to include it.

Another day, another exploit! This exploit is similar to Cauldron except even more powerful but a lot safer! The exploit called BootSwap was made by commandblockguy and has the ability to change the BOOT code of a calculator to whatever you want, so long as the BOOT code is 5.3.6 or below! What's special about this tool is that you can get features on a TI-84 Plus CE that TI reserved exclusively to the TI-83 Premium CE. Not only does this mean you could get an Exact Math Engine (which can display answers in radical form instead of just decimal), you can get Python support as well with TI's old external module! To add icing on top of the cake, it also allows you to install any OS you want, even custom ones! Python running on a non-Python Edition using BootSwap Although I said it's safer than using Cauldron, it's still a tool that messes with the BOOT code. If something goes wrong during execution, like the battery dies, your calculator could become permanently bricked with no way of recovering it. However, if EME and Python are that important to you, it's actually something I can recommend!

That design looks fantastic! Also very delicious and moist. Happy birthday!

Just yesterday, I wrote an article on Reddit asking what teacher's and exam proctor's opinions on the removal of assembly were. I got a few responses back and, as I expected, few people knew that Exam Mode was a thing and that calculators could be updated. It appears they just don't think that there's enough cheating going on to look into using Exam Mode, and they don't seem to care if Assembly stays around or not. For better or for worse, I know there's a lot of students cheating using TI's built-in program editor (which is easily defeated using an updated Exam Mode) so you're one of those people and you're in the USA, lucky you. I only got a few responses so my data isn't well rounded, but it doesn't seem like Exam Mode is going to be a serious thing in the near future.

For those who want to jailbreak, run ASM programs again, and potentially downgrade; I've just released a detailed tutorial on how to do all of that!

More news! If you're a person who doesn't like using shells and software like Cesium or you just want the OS to act like it use to, then you're in luck! User Jacobly recently released a program called Asmhook. After you install it using arTIfiCE, it will allow you to run assembly programs from the program menu just like it use to work! Unfortunately, it doesn't bring back commands removed from the catalog like 'Asm(' or 'Asm84CEPrgm'. However, unless you want to program or compile ASM directly on the calculator, they're not really necessary anymore.

Actually, the TI-84 Plus CE eZ-80 is already clocked at 48MHz and the maximum the chip supports is 50MHz so there's little to be gained there. Yes, you can send programs via USB; that's been a thing since the TI-84 Plus I just got word from some of the developers pushing these exploits and boy, I can tell you it's going to be a rough week for TI and an amazing one for consumers.

New jailbreak news! As of yesterday, user Ne3s2-3p4 posted on Cemetech a new exploit called Cauldron. This exploit is significantly more powerful and dangerous than the arTIfiCE jailbreak I mentioned in the first post. There's a few really useful things it can do: It will remove OS verification so you can install custom OSes! You will permanently be able to downgrade to any OS higher than 5.3.0 It'll make the calculator slightly faster at doing anything. They claim about .3% However, it is a very new, very powerful tool that replaces boot code which is a very tricky and dangerous process. If something goes wrong like the calculator dying during the middle of execution, or you use an incompatible calculator, then it will likely be permanently bricked. Although I'm sure it has been extensively tested, like I said, it's a very new tool. For those who want to downgrade their calculator, this is currently the only way since TI broke the old, safer way. I do not know if the old way will be updated with a patch but I recommend you wait an see before trying such an extreme exploit. For those who live on the edge, the repo is currently being hosted by TheMachine02. The amount of exploits being released is on a scale that I've never seen before. It will be a minimum of a few weeks before TI has a chance to push out a patched update. I normally would not write about such a dangerous tool however, it appears TI needed to be shown (again) that trying to mess with a passionate community of developers was a very, very bad idea. Answers: Nope, the best you could do on older TI-84 Plus CEs was reduce the wait states which had a similar effect to overclocking. However, the TI-84 Plus CE is locked at 48MHz. As of right now, the community has respected Exam Mode and most of the big calculator websites will refuse to host exploits related to cheating. Exam mode on the TI-84 Plus CE has never been targeted before however, this does not mean it wont be in future exploits.

It didn't take long for community member CommandBlockGuy to release the first video on how to use the jailbreak!

Good news! The first jailbreak has been released! Because it was such big news, I decided to make a new thread which you can find here:

Summary: A few months ago, I reported that Texas Instruments had removed ASM programming support from the TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE in the latest OS. Despite the overwhelmingly negative feedback TI received from consumers, ASM was not brought back officially. Instead, developers behind the YvanTT account posted on Cemetech the very first jailbreak that will allow users on the latest OS 5.6.0 to run ASM programs and games! The jailbreak is called arTIfiCE and the instructions for how to install and run the exploit are explained on the arTIfiCE website. It relies on an exploit found in the Cabri Jr. app to allow ASM programs to be run. Unfortunately, you can only run ASM programs through the Cabri Jr. app becuase the [prgm] menu will still mark the files as invalid. Cabri Jr. is very slow and unintuitive but fortunately there's a solution for that! If you install a shell called Cesium, you can easily run any ASM game. Cesium has a ton of features like RAM backups (so if a game crashes no data is lost) and a quick launch key combination! For those who accidentally upgraded to OS 5.6.0 and want to go back to an older OS, you can! Be aware that if you have a Python Edition calculator, then I do not recommend downgrading because it will break Python capabilities. If you just use Cesium to run your programs you'll get both Python and ASM programming! If you're not someone with a Python Edition, then I have a tutorial you can follow once you jailbreak the calculator here. I'm super stoked that the community was able to hack ASM back in within a few months of TI removing it. Like I said in my original report, the TI-84 Plus CE was never a secure device and apparently TI needed the community to prove that to them. I have add a warning: just because this works in OS 5.6.0 doesn't mean it will work in a future OS like OS 5.6.1 or higher. Therefor it's imperative you do not update your calculator even if a new update is released. And most definitely never update Cabri Jr. because the jailbreak relies on it! Thank you very much to YvanTT who simply states that they're "fighting for the freedom of peaceful assembly." Happy programming! Sources: arTIfiCE website: https://yvantt.github.io/arTIfiCE/ Cesium: https://github.com/mateoconlechuga/cesium/releases/tag/v3.2.3 Downgrade tutorial: https://youtu.be/abB0ZEdQ1rs YvanTT's post: https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=287720#287720

It's been a while but I have another update. TI recently released OS 5.6.0 for the TI-84 Plus CE and OS 5.5.2 for the TI-83 Premium CE. There is virtually no difference between 5.6.0 and 5.5.2. Besides the fact that OS 5.6.0 is the first publicly downloadable OS (for the TI-84 Plus CE) from TI's website that removes ASM capabilities, TI changed very little in these updates. Basically there's now the option to disable the numerical solver during exam mode, and there's a bug fix that now lets the Python app properly display outputs. Unfortunately, TI did a pretty poor job documenting these changes. In fact, there's been so few new features since OS 5.3.0 (released in 2017); TI has been reusing old features as 'new' ones for about 3 years now. (related meme) As expected, TI also hasn't been all that up-front with the massive fact that they removed support for a whole language from their calculator. There's no mention of it anywhere on the new features page that most people will see. (I have bordered reused features) Source: Education TI To TI's credit: they technically did add a warning banner to the top of the separate downloads page, but it's not exactly an eye-catcher. I've had dozens of people on YouTube and Reddit already asking why they can't run programs anymore after updating so the banner is obviously not very effective. Source: Education TI The update page was so poor, I was asked by community members to release a video properly explaining the new features and the consequences of updating. I just published that video today and you can view it here: I'll cut to the chase and show you the end screen 'Should you update?' part. In layman's terms, if you have a Python Edition running OS 5.5.1 or higher then there's no reason not to update. You already have ASM disabled and you'll get new Python features and bug fixes. If you don't have a Python Edition or you're running OS 5.4.0 or below, then I highly suggest against updating because not only will you lose ASM capaiblities, non-Python Edition calculators won't get any of the Python-related improvements. That's all I have for this update. I can't wait for a jailbreak to be released.