New TI-84 Plus CE Jailbreak arTIfiCE Hacks ASM Games Back in Your Calculator!

[TheLastMillennial]

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

 

[cj09beira]

fighting for the freedom of peaceful assembly

 i see what you did there 

[givingtnt]

Great news.
Screw TI for bricking their own hardware.

[Trik'Stari]

1990's: I bet we'll have flying cars in the future

2020: We can finally jailbreak our calculators!

[TheLastMillennial]

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

 

[tikker]

Woo another victory. Haha I remember the days with ndless for the Nspire, anxiously waiting if or when after every OS update...

[Drama Lama]

The great news if you want to play games instead of doing math

 

just overclocked my Casio fx CG 20 and fx CG 50

 

from 58mHz to 94.3mHz

 

with a program 

and it makes your calculator noticeably  faster especially when drawing graphs

Edited September 7, 2020 by Drama Lama

[Zodiark1593]

2 minutes ago, Drama Lama said:

The great news if you want to play games instead of doing math

 

just overclocked my Casio fx CG 20 and fx CG 50

 

from 58mHz to 94.3mHz

 

with a program 

and it makes your calculator noticeably  faster especially when drawing graphs

Unfair advantage for exam-taking.

 

Wonder if TI will try to up the ante further. Need some more popcorn though. 

[Drama Lama]

4 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Unfair advantage for exam-taking.

It has an exam mode

 

and all schools usually set it back to factory settings before exams 

 

 

Does the TI calculator also support OC via a program on the calculator like the Casio?

Edited September 7, 2020 by Drama Lama

[Zodiark1593]

5 minutes ago, Drama Lama said:

It has an exam mode

 

and all schools usually set it back to factory settings before exams 

 

 

Does the TI calculator also support OC via a program on the calculator like the Casio?

If I took the bother to modify the calculator the way I’d desire, I’d probably take measures to spoof Exam Mode too so as to prevent my work being undone. 

[TheLastMillennial]

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:

1. It will remove OS verification so you can install custom OSes!
2. You will permanently be able to downgrade to any OS higher than 5.3.0
3. 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:

On 9/7/2020 at 3:03 PM, Drama Lama said:

Does the TI calculator also support OC via a program on the calculator like the Casio?

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.

 

On 9/7/2020 at 3:10 PM, Zodiark1593 said:

If I took the bother to modify the calculator the way I’d desire, I’d probably take measures to spoof Exam Mode too so as to prevent my work being undone. 

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.

[Drama Lama]

3 minutes ago, TheLastMillennial said:

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.

I see a opportunity for TI to make money 

: just sell „ unlocked „ calculators

 

does TI allow you to put programs on it via usb like Casio?

[TheLastMillennial]

Just now, Drama Lama said:

I see a opportunity for TI to make money 

: just sell „ unlocked „ calculators

 

does TI allow you to put programs on it via usb like Casio?

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.

[TheLastMillennial]

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.

[Bombastinator]

they probably should have just made two versions one of which was clear or something (do prisons still do clear stuff?) and contained the limited system.  While painting the insides of the regular one red or something. Really it was just asking for trouble. 

[TheLastMillennial]

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!

 

[TheLastMillennial]

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.

[TheLastMillennial]

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!

[TheLastMillennial]

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.

[SFFDesigns]

Nice! As an Ndless user on the CX, it’s nice to see the same open ecosystem on other locked down calculators!

[user0]

On 9/16/2020 at 12:01 PM, TheLastMillennial said:

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!

Hi, I'm a new, new, newbie here. But I'm eager to learn... First, thanks so much for all your contributions! I need a bit of help. I've installed and run BootSwap to load a TI-83 premium CE OS on my TI-84 plus CE. My TI84CE's boot code is 5.3.1.0050 and it is a series-L model. OS's base code is 5.3.0.0037 (downgraded from 5.3.1). Within BootSwap, I first disabled OS verification on my TI84+CE. But even with this done, I still can't install a TI83CE OS, I receive the common verification message. I guess I'm doing something wrong or I don't understand something probably as basic as important. Can you help me? I've tried many things and browsed quite a lot to find an answer before asking you. Sorry if all that  sound trivial and... thanks so much in advance for your help.

[user0]

1 hour ago, user0 said:

Hi, I'm a new, new, newbie here. But I'm eager to learn... First, thanks so much for all your contributions! I need a bit of help. I've installed and run BootSwap to load a TI-83 premium CE OS on my TI-84 plus CE. My TI84CE's boot code is 5.3.1.0050 and it is a series-L model. OS's base code is 5.3.0.0037 (downgraded from 5.3.1). Within BootSwap, I first disabled OS verification on my TI84+CE. But even with this done, I still can't install a TI83CE OS, I receive the common verification message. I guess I'm doing something wrong or I don't understand something probably as basic as important. Can you help me? I've tried many things and browsed quite a lot to find an answer before asking you. Sorry if all that  sound trivial and... thanks so much in advance for your help.

Hello again, Forget this all. I've find my way. I could download TiLP and use it instead of TI-Connect. Since I'm on Windows 10, I had to download and install separately the gtk-2 runtime file, then install TiLP with gtk-2 installation box UNchecked (I think the installation blocked there). Afterwards, I had to download Zadig and run it to change the pilot for my TI84CE. With TiLP, I could transfer the TI83CE OS without any problem on my TI84CE. Thanks to critor, which I took the instructions from this thread: https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17536.

[user0]

45 minutes ago, user0 said:

Hello again, Forget this all. I've find my way. I could download TiLP and use it instead of TI-Connect. Since I'm on Windows 10, I had to download and install separately the gtk-2 runtime file, then install TiLP with gtk-2 installation box UNchecked (I think the installation blocked there). Afterwards, I had to download Zadig and run it to change the pilot for my TI84CE. With TiLP, I could transfer the TI83CE OS without any problem on my TI84CE. Thanks to critor, which I took the instructions from this thread: https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17536.

... I forgot: this thread was also absolutely useful, thanks to Lionel Debroux: https://sourceforge.net/p/tilp/bugs/228/

[GDRRiley]

Do not start posting on an old thread.