Texas Instruments BA-20 Profit Manager (2000)

Texas Instruments introduced in the United States with the BA-20 Profit Manager already in the year 1986 a very useful calculator. Beside the basic calculator functions 6 additional keys enable the COST, SELL, MARGIN calculations. You enter either two of the variables and get instantly the result of the remaining value.

Dismantling this BA-20 Profit Manager manufactured in April 2000 by Inventec Corporation in Shanghai, China reveals a clean design centered around an Inventa LI3163 single-chip calculator circuit soldered on a double-sided printed circuit board (PCB) and powered by four solar cells. We suspect that Inventa Electronics designed a replacement for the obsolete Sharp LI3163 chip of the previous generation BA-20 Profit Manager or licensed its design. Please notice the confusing "Revisions" of the two otherwise identical BA-20 Profit Manager calculators, one manufactured in April 2000 with Revision A (Date code S-0400A) and one with Date code S-0500 and a blank revision field.

Inspecting the PCB of this BA-20 Profit Manager calculator brought our attention to a small mark reading BA20 PCB VER0.3, we spotted similar PCB-Marks already with the previous versions of the BA-20 Profit manager and started compiling a list of the PCB-Marks on calculators manufactured by OEMs for Texas Instruments.

In Europe a very similar calculator was sold as TI-620.

An earlier version of the BA-20 sports an integrated clock like the European TI-610. In August 2002 the design of the BA-20 Profit Manager was slightly changed to allow the usage of larger solar cells.

If you have additions to the above article please email: joerg@datamath.org.

© Joerg Woerner, December 5, 2001. No reprints without written permission.