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

TheLastMillennial · July 30, 2020

Important Update: After not listening to anybody, TI has released the TI-84 Plus CE -T Python Edition with OS 5.5.5. This means that there is now an OS compatible with the TI-84 Plus CE family that bans ASM programming right now!

What changed?

OS 5.5.5 banned ASM on the regular TI-84 Plus CE and changed nothing else.
The new TI-84 Plus CE -T Python Edition (which I'll abbreviate to 84PE) has the python app found in the TI-83 Premium CE Edition Python (83EP). However, TI seems to have strangled the 84PE's capabilities. Unlike the 83EP, there is no exam mode which allows the creation or use of Python programs on the 84PE. This restricts the 84PE to the capabilities of the regular TI-84 Plus CE when it's time for a test!

As of this moment it is not for download on TI's website which likely means that OS 5.6.0 is right around the corner.

Source:

TI-Planet (en): TI-84 Plus CE-T Python Edition Discovery Test, OS 5.5.5

TI-Planet (fr): Test-découverte TI-84 Plus CE-T Python Edition, OS 5.5.5

TheLastMillennial · September 2, 2020

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.