[TI-H] Re: TI-86 hardware upgrades
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[TI-H] Re: TI-86 hardware upgrades
> I suppose the hw might be the same, but you'd need to know how it worked.
> (like say, which flash chip they used) I would assume they'd use an
> extra port, but which one? and where does that connect on the board?
Right. But I'm just saying, they did have one, and I'd assume it was a
modification of the production version. I doubt they built an entire calc
essentially by hand, especially since there were many of them.
> And they did blank the page in rom that was used to update it, why bother
> to do that? I wouldn't expect it to cost that much more to include an
> extra 16k of data on a rom...
Probably just because it wasn't needed, one of those things you do without
really thinking about it. Could easily be "why include it" instead of "why
not include it". Probably an #ifdef somewhere.
I don't think it would cost anything different, since the chip is still the
same size. And since it's burned, not flashed, it shouldn't take longer to
produce (some flash chips write all 0's or 1's faster than normal data).
> If it took *any* extra hw to support the flash chip, they probably
> removed it eventually to cut costs.
Definitely. But if it was just a mod to a production calc, it might be
possible to do again. Unfortunately I don't know enough about hardware :(
Anyone have any pointers on getting started with this sort of thing? Any
books worth reading? I'm very interested in this type of stuff, just not
sure where to begin. Hopefully my later EE classes will be more valuable
than the last one I took.
References: