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TI-84 Plus series

Series of graphing calculators produced by Texas Instruments From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

TI-84 Plus series
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Not to be confused with TI-84 Plus CE series.

The TI-84 Plus series is a line of graphing calculators manufactured by Texas Instruments. Despite its age, the TI-84 Plus line is still widespread in the United States,[1] and it remains the series of choice for many schools more than 20 years after its introduction.[2] The TI-84 Plus-series calculators have amassed a significant following for their support of assembly language and TI-BASIC programs,[3] and the original TI-84 Plus models were some of the first calculators to have a substantial hobbyist community;[4] this has resulted in the series having a large library of community-created programs and software.[5]

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The TI-84 Plus line was superseded by the TI-84 Plus CE series in 2015;[6] in the original series, only the TI-84 Plus is still in production,[7] the Silver Edition and CSE having been discontinued in 2015.[8]

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Editions

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TI-84 Plus

The original TI-84 Plus, commonly known as the TI-84 Plus Monochrome[9], was released in 2004.[10] Together with the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition and the TI-84 Plus T, they are known as the "monochromes" due to their monochrome displays. The TI-84 Plus succeeded the TI-83 Plus; its keyboard layout, compatibility and interface are similar to that of the TI-83 series calculators. Despite this, it has significant hardware advantages: its CPU is 50% faster, and it has thrice as much flash ROM as the TI-83 Plus.[11] The TI-84 Plus also introduced a mini-USB data transfer port (while retaining the 2.5mm "I/O" serial port from the TI-83 Plus), and a built-in perpetual clock.[12] The USB port on the TI-84 Plus series is USB On-The-Go compliant, similar to the TI-Nspire calculator; it can connect to another calculator in order to send and receive files, known as Link Mode.[13] It can also connect to a computer to download programs and files using Texas Instruments' proprietary program, TI-Connect. An all-white version of the TI-84 Plus was introduced in 2023.[14]

TI-84 Plus Silver Edition

The TI-84 Plus Silver Edition, also known as the TI-84 Plus SE or the TI-84 Plus SE Monochrome, was introduced on Jan 7, 2004, as an upgrade to the TI-83 Plus Silver Edition. Like the TI-83 Plus Silver Edition, it features a 15 MHz Zilog Z80 processor and 24 KB of user-available RAM; the system technically features 128 KB, but as with the TI-83 Plus SE, the operating system was never updated to utilize it. Newer calculators have only 48 KB of RAM. All calculators whose serial numbers end in the letters H to Z have fewer RAM pages, causing some programs to not run correctly.[15] The calculator has 1.5 MB of user-accessible ROM. Like the standard TI-84 Plus, the Silver Edition includes a built-in USB port, a built-in clock, and assembly support. It uses 4 AAA batteries and a backup button cell battery. The TI-84 Plus Silver Edition came preloaded with around 30 applications.[16] It has a removable faceplate, and new faceplates in a variety of colors (black, brown, maroon, red, pink, purple, navy, blue, cyan, green, gold, orange, tangerine, grey and white) were available to purchase on Texas Instruments' website.[16]

TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition (CSE)

The TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition, also known as the TI-84 Plus CSE, C SE or C-SE, was released in 2013 as the first Z80-based Texas Instruments graphing calculator with a color screen. It had a 320×240-pixel full-color screen, a modified version of the TI-84 Plus's 2.55MP operating system, a removable 1200 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and keystroke compatibility with existing math and programming tools.[17] It had the standard 2.5 mm "I/O" port and a mini-USB port for connectivity and charging. The calculator was praised for its high-resolution (relative to contemporary graphing calculators) color screen, which allowed new pedagogical approaches such as graphing multiple functions together in different colors. It was widely criticized for its slow performance by educators and hobbyists/hackers alike[citation needed]; the performance was attributed to the calculator retaining its monochrome predecessors' CPU to drive a screen displaying 300 times as much image information. Nonetheless, it demonstrated the value of a color-screen TI-84 Plus calculator and was superseded two years later by the TI-84 Plus CE which was embraced by the calculator hobbyist community. Notable third-party milestones included overclocking the device from 15 MHz to 22 MHz[18] and the third-party Doors CS shell.[19] It is manufactured by Kinpo Electronics.[20]

TI-84 Plus T

The TI-84 Plus T was introduced in 2015 by Texas Instruments in the Netherlands. This model is very similar to the original TI-84 Plus, but features an LED to indicate whether or not the calculator is in Exam Mode. The hardware of the TI-84 Plus T is similar to the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition, with ninety-six 16 KB pages of archive memory, for a total of 1540 KB. However, unlike the TI-84 Plus, the TI-84 Plus T does not allow users to execute assembly programs. The TI-84 Plus T has 2 different Exam Modes available with different levels of restrictiveness. The most restrictive level does not allow for any existing programs to be accessed, and does not allow any new programs to be created. This mode makes the LED blink green. The second, more moderate Exam Mode is the same, apart from three additional applications being allowed (PlySmlt2, Inequalz and Conics). This mode makes the LED blink orange.

TI-84 Plus Pocket

In 2011, Texas Instruments launched the TI-84 Pocket.fr, a miniaturized version of the TI-84 Plus for the French market.[21] In 2012, they launched the TI-84 Plus Pocket SE, a miniaturized version of the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition for the Asian market.[22]

TI-84 Plus EZ-Spot

The TI-84 Plus EZ-Spot series, also known as the School editions and the School Property editions, are variants of TI-84 Plus series calculators produced by Texas Instruments and only made available for schools to purchase. This special design was produced in an effort to combat theft.[23] Owners can buy other interchangeable colored face-plates and slide-cases online. A kickstand-style slide case and other accessories are also available. Every edition of the TI-84 Plus series has had a School variant.

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Software

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Programs and applications

The TI-84 can run a wide variety of both official and community-made software[24], including video games, math programs, educational programs, graphics programs, and even some internet-based programs (operating through the link port) such as ChatGPT[25]. Applications, often called flash applications, are a type of program stored in the calculator's ROM; these tend to be more complex than programs.

The TI-84 Plus series supports two programming languages: TI-BASIC and Z80 assembly language. There are also several community-developed languages for the calculators, like Axe.

TI-84 Plus monochrome operating systems

There have been eight[12] operating system releases for the monochrome TI-84 Plus series:

  • 2.21 (March 2004)
  • 2.22 (August 2004)
  • 2.30 (December 2004)
  • 2.40 (November 2005)
  • 2.41 (May 2006)
  • 2.43 (December 2007)
  • 2.53MP (February 2010)
  • 2.55MP (January 2011)

When OS 2.30 was initially released, users noticed that graphing speed was greatly reduced; this was due to the addition of asymptote checking in graphing.[26]

In January 2006, Texas Instruments released OS 2.40 for the TI-84 Plus series. The most noticeable addition to the new OS was the "Press-To-Test" feature that allowed a teacher to disable any programs installed on the calculator, so they cannot be used on tests, etc.[27]

OS 2.53MP, released February 2010, added support for pretty-printing equations (called MathPrint, or MP). MathPrint came with severe performance impacts[28], and many people prefer to use OS 2.43 instead.[29]

In July 2009, a community-made patch was released which allowed user-made operating systems to be easily uploaded onto the TI-84 Plus series. Shortly after the patch was developed, the RSA keys for the calculator's operating system were factored via the General number field sieve (GNFS) algorithm, making a software patch unnecessary. In response to this, Texas Instruments released a newer hardware revision which only accepts other, stronger RSA keys, making it harder to load user-made operating systems or older operating system releases (2.53MP and earlier). The community has found a way around the newest limitation by discovering a way to revert to older versions of the boot code.[30]

Critics point out that the basic design of the TI-84 has not changed since it was released in 2004, contrary to the trend of rapid design change occurring in other areas of electronics manufacturing.[31][32]

The TI-84 Plus, like its predecessor, can be used on SAT, ACT, and International Baccalaureate tests; however, it is common practice to reset the calculator's memory before the test starts.[33]

TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition operating systems

There have been two[34] operating system releases for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition (CSE):

  • 4.0 (April 2013)
  • 4.2 (January 2014)

The TI-84 Plus CSE is similar in functionality to the monochrome TI-84 Plus, both only being able to run TI-BASIC or Z80 assembly programs.

Linking software

Texas Instruments provides the TI-Connect linking software; it allows a TI-84 Plus series calculator to communicate with a computer.[35] It can do the following:[36]

  • install programs and flash applications on a calculator,
  • load calculator files, such as a StudyCards stack (a database for the TI educational application StudyCards)[37],
  • create and restore calculator backups of both RAM and flash memory,
  • put a calculator into Exam Mode,
  • update the firmware on a calculator to a newer version, and downgrade it to an older version when possible,
  • and program in TI-BASIC using its built-in IDE.

Texas Instruments' newer program for the TI-84 Plus CE series calculators, TI-Connect CE, is backwards-compatible with the TI-84 Plus series; it can be used in place of TI-Connect.[38] TI-Connect is compatible with Windows XP and up[35] while TI-Connect CE is compatible with Windows 10 and up.[38]

There are multiple third-party linking programs compatible with the TI-84 Plus series; however, they are all abandonware and are only compatible with the calculator's serial port. These run on the Commodore Amiga, the Atari, MS-DOS, classic Mac OS, and Windows 3.1; and as such, are not compatible with any modern operating system.[39]

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Technical specifications

Etymology

A common misconception is that the TI-84 Plus series is an improvement upon "the TI-84 series", or that the TI-84 Plus is an advanced version of the "TI-84"; in reality, no such series or calculator model has ever existed. Rather, the name of the TI-84 Plus series derives from the TI-83 Plus series, which was Texas Instruments' flagship graphing calculator line at the time.

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