Texas Instruments Bans all ASM Programs/ Games on TI-84 Plus CE Calculators.

[TheLastMillennial]

If you missed it, Linus covered this topic in WAN show! I really appreciate the coverage this news is receiving, thank you!

 

(Segment at 56:00)

 

[JZStudios]

On 5/23/2020 at 12:37 PM, handymanshandle said:

Maybe I'm not all that smart, but can someone explain to me the love for calculators that some people hold?

The ray tracing. Apparently.

On 5/23/2020 at 12:33 PM, GDRRiley said:

to say the least I got no love to for TI. 130$ for a dam graphing calculator

I don't think I ever updated my ti84 CE software does anyone do it? can it be flashed backwards?

My buddy works for TI, and he's pleased as punch any time people think they only make calculators.

[GDRRiley]

15 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

My buddy works for TI, and he's pleased as punch any time people think they only make calculators.

I know they make a lot more than that but I've got a special hate for that division

[JZStudios]

So I asked my buddy who works for TI and he said they'll be working on it soon, and they're very concerned about it.

[TheLastMillennial]

@JZStudios I'm not too surprised your friend doesn't know or care much about the calculator division. As you probably know, TI is mainly a semiconductor company, the calculator division is just one of their most profitable divisions.

 

@GDRRiley I'd be careful about hating a whole division. From my understanding, the engineers are great people, it's the higher-ups that are forcing them to implement such absurd restrictions and it's not up to the engineers to determine the calculator's price.

[JZStudios]

23 minutes ago, TheLastMillennial said:

@JZStudios I'm not too surprised your friend doesn't know or care much about the calculator division. As you probably know, TI is mainly a semiconductor company, the calculator division is just one of their most profitable divisions.

Not according to him. According to him it's only 5% of their revenue, which I believe. I guess there's the difference between specific divisions, but it's overall worth isn't much.

[Kilrah]

He said "most profitable", that's not linked to the amount of business.

 

[GDRRiley]

6 hours ago, TheLastMillennial said:

@GDRRiley I'd be careful about hating a whole division. From my understanding, the engineers are great people, it's the higher-ups that are forcing them to implement such absurd restrictions and it's not up to the engineers to determine the calculator's price.

last time I checked there hasn't been any change to them in the last 10 years

[TheLastMillennial]

If throughout this thread all you thought was 'I don't use ASM I'll just update anyways' I have another warning. Due to the massive amount of extra code TI put into OS 5.5.1 (even with the removal of ASM capabilities) the OS now eats up an additional Archive sector (64KB of Archive storage) if you're upgrading from OS 5.1.5 or higher! If you're upgrading from OS 5.1.1 or below then it will consume two additional archive sectors (128KB of Archive storage)!

 

This means when you update, due to the way variables (Lists, programs, python scripts, y-vars, matrices, etc) are stored, up to the first 128KB of that data will be deleted! People keep data in the Archive because it's not volatile like RAM so it's safe after a RAM reset. This must be annoying for teachers who utilize the python application because now they'll likely have to re-send classroom scripts and other data to every single calculator that updated.

 

For the average user this update means all your variables are reset. For a power user, that means any program, script, important list or statistics variable you have is at risk of being destroyed with no way of recovering once you update. In order to avoid this, you must back up every single file on your calculator to a computer before updating, then resend the backup once the installation is complete. Sadly, most will not see this warning before updating and end up losing potentially hours of work.

 

Source: TI-Planet: English | French

[TheLastMillennial]

In order to summarize all the events that have happened over the past month, I made a video that puts the vast majority of all the information I've gathered from dozens of sources all in one video! There's a lot of information that wasn't covered in this thread so if you want to get caught up, this will certainly get you up to speed!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSkN0aMswXs

[Drama Lama]

How did Texas Instruments fall so deep

Announcing the first transistor radio in the world 

From 

Producing worlds first integrated circuit 

 

Pioneer in making the first home computers

 

Producing The best computer electronics in the world 

 

To 

 

selling overpriced calculators to schools

 

( please correct me if I’m wrong)

[TheLastMillennial]

Yes Drama Lama, it's quite sad. I wrote a paper about the TI calculator 'monopoly' in the US a little while ago. Here's a segment from it that adds to what you just said.

 

Quote

 

Within the first 20 years of Texas Instruments developing its own calculators, there were many technological jumps. Some examples are when it developed a way for the calculator to displays its results on a Liquid Crystal Display rather than printing results on expensive, single use paper. A big breakthrough came when Texas Instruments implemented a way for their calculators to be much thinner and faster by switching to modern-day integrated circuits (“50 Years of Innovation”). Unfortunately, in the past 20 years, the only major development Texas Instruments has changed in their calculators, sold in the United States, is switching to color screens.

“50 Years of Innovation.” Texas Instruments, Texas Instruments, 2019, education.ti.com/html/snapapp/timeline.html.

 

 

[Kilrah]

3 hours ago, Drama Lama said:

selling overpriced calculators to schools

 

( please correct me if I’m wrong)

Selling calculators is only a small one of all the things they do...

[Drama Lama]

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Selling calculators is only a small one of all the things they do...

Read that after I made the post 

but what are they actually making besides calculators?

[Kilrah]

Mostly semiconductors, i.e. components that go in a plethora of products rather than products themselves, hence why calculators are pretty much the only thing a random consumer would see stick out of the water.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments

[lepa71]

Which fw can I safely update to before loosing ASM? I'm on 5.1.5 and downloaded TI84CEBundle-5.4.0.34.b84 but not installed it.

Thanks

[JZStudios]

On 6/18/2020 at 9:03 AM, Drama Lama said:

How did Texas Instruments fall so deep

Announcing the first transistor radio in the world 

From Producing worlds first integrated circuit Pioneer in making the first home computers Producing The best computer electronics in the world 

To selling overpriced calculators to schools

Read my post a few comments up. The calculator division is really small. They still do everything else, it's just that average people only hear about the calculators because they made a deal with schools. They still make chips and other electronics, which you can buy, but if you aren't making your own components it's unlikely you'll know. Or you might cheap out and buy Chinese chips.

 

On 6/18/2020 at 9:22 AM, TheLastMillennial said:

Unfortunately, in the past 20 years, the only major development Texas Instruments has changed in their calculators, sold in the United States, is switching to color screens.

They have color screens now!?

[TheLastMillennial]

20 hours ago, lepa71 said:

Which fw can I safely update to before loosing ASM? I'm on 5.1.5 and downloaded TI84CEBundle-5.4.0.34.b84 but not installed it.

Thanks

You can safely install 5.4.0 however, I prefer OS 5.3.0. OS 5.3.0 allows the Asm84CEPrgm token which lets you easily do cool things like enable dark mode, speed up your calculator, or enable lowercase letters. I personally have it installed on all my TI-84 Plus CEs. You can find it here: http://ti-pla.net/a1138252

 

19 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

They have color screens now!?

Yup, first color TI-84 was introduced in 2013 with the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition. It was vastly improved upon with the TI-84 Plus CE in 2015.

[lepa71]

@TheLastMillennial Do I need just OS 5.3.0 or the whole bundle?

[TheLastMillennial]

@lepa71 It doesn't really matter. The bundle includes OS 5.3.0 and all compatible apps, but 90% of the apps you'll never use and are just a waste of space.

[lepa71]

3 minutes ago, TheLastMillennial said:

@lepa71 It doesn't really matter. The bundle includes OS 5.3.0 and all compatible apps, but 90% of the apps you'll never use and are just a waste of space.

@TheLastMillennial If I do just OS, will the apps stay or OS update will wipe them?

I got the calc for my son's 8 grade. I don't know if school will use any of those apps.

 

[SFFDesigns]

4 hours ago, TheLastMillennial said:

Yup, first color TI-84 was introduced in 2013 with the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition. It was vastly improved upon with the TI-84 Plus CE in 2015

as well as the TI Nspire CX in 2011.

 

I personally have it, and it's a pain to do anything other than use it with the included programs. I've been overclocking it, and sometimes I've corrupted my OS (oops) and only OS 4.5.0.1180 is compatible with the jailbreak (Ndless) necessary to use other programming languages, which is an older version and hard to find (I don't think it's available thru TI's website). 

 

It's still such a shame to see them do this to the 84+ CE as well, I'd have hoped they learned their lesson with the Nspire

[Jotoco]

5 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Read my post a few comments up. The calculator division is really small. They still do everything else, it's just that average people only hear about the calculators because they made a deal with schools. They still make chips and other electronics, which you can buy, but if you aren't making your own components it's unlikely you'll know. Or you might cheap out and buy Chinese chips.

 

They have color screens now!?

I thought most of the fabrication was Chinese anyway. They may be mostly designed in the US, but do TI still manufacture there? 

[JZStudios]

2 hours ago, Jotoco said:

I thought most of the fabrication was Chinese anyway. They may be mostly designed in the US, but do TI still manufacture there? 

Good question. I think the chips they do, the calculators, probably not. My buddy designs stuff, so they have an amount of in-house fabrication. I'm not sure about mass scale production.

[TheLastMillennial]

8 hours ago, lepa71 said:

@TheLastMillennial If I do just OS, will the apps stay or OS update will wipe them?

I got the calc for my son's 8 grade. I don't know if school will use any of those apps.

 

The apps will stay. If you're in the USA, there's a very slim chance a teacher will require students to use one of the apps. Most of my teachers didn't even know the calculator had apps at all. The students will eventually figure out themselves which ones are useful, which ones are good boredom killers, and which ones are useless.
 

@Jotoco I think TI has a factory in China but the vast majority of the TI-84 Plus family and Nspire family is made in the Philippines.