Texas Instruments TI-84 PLUS Silver Edition (Best Buy)

This colorful TI-84 Plus Silver Edition was introduced for Back-to-School 2008 campaign by consumer electronics retailer Best Buy together with its purple sibling and a pink TI-30X IIS.

In 2008 Texas Instruments sold on its website faceplates in 15 different colors: Black, brown, dark red, red, pink, purple, dark blue, blue, light blue, green, gold, orange, bright orange, grey and white. Except bright orange were matching slide cases available, too. One special “Data Collection” snap-on faceplate highlights the keys and functions of the Vernier EasyData™ application.

Comparing this TI-84 Plus Silver Edition manufactured in April 2008 (Revision Code L) by Inventec (Pudong) Corporation with an early product assembled in 2007 (Revision Code G) reveals only few differences. The design sports still 3 chips on one printed circuit board (PCB):

• TI REF84 PLCR/TA1: Z80 microprocessor, RAM, USB-Port 
    and supporting logic
• Spansion S29AL016D: 2M Bytes Flash ROM|
• Novatek NT7564H: Single-chip 64*120 pixel display driver

The picture on the right gives an enhanced view of the ASIC that clocks the Z80 microprocessor with 15 MHz and incorporates the RAM, USB-Port and logic. Learn more about the Hardware Architecture of TI’s Graphing Calculators. Please notice the smaller package of the new TI REF 84PLCR/TA1 ASIC compared with the previous TI REF 83PLUSB/TA2  or TI REF 84PLUSB/TA3 found in the TI-84 Plus family manufactured between 2004 and 2007.

Recently members of the Graphing Calculator Programming community under the lead of Xavier Andréani made a very interesting discovery:

• All TI-84 Plus / S.E. with the TA2 or TA3 ASIC have access to 128k Bytes RAM.
• All TI-84 Plus / S.E. with the TA1 ASIC have access to only 48k Bytes RAM using
    the same assembly commands.

The driver circuit of the LC-Display was traditionally manufactured by Toshiba for Texas Instruments' graphing calculators. This TI-84 Plus Silver Edition manufactured in 2008 shows with the Novatek NT7564H a one-by-one replacement. It is just a bare chip mounted on a flexible piece of circuit board attached between the display and the main PCB.

The TI-84 Plus Silver Edition supports the ViewScreen panel and the TI-Presenter with an Presentation Link Adapter. A serial port of the calculators allows the connection to the Calculator-Based Laboratory system CBL, its successor CBL 2 and the Calculator-Based Ranger CBR. The added USB interface of the TI-84 Plus family calculators connects directly with the Calculator-Based Ranger CBR 2 introduced in 2004. With a new cradle even the optional full-sized QWERTY Keyboard introduced in 2002 matches with the TI-84 Plus series.

Best Buy introduced no new Texas Instruments calculators for the Back-to-School 2009 campaign, but in July 2009 we found both this blue TI-84 Plus S.E. and its purple sibbling with a clearance sales sticker price of $116.49 resp. $117.49 while the standard TI-84 Plus S.E. sold for $137.99.

Texas Instruments announced on March 1^st, 2010 the TI-84 Plus Operating System version 2.53MP with MathPrint™ mode for free download. The OS 2.53MP enables users to input and view math symbols and formulas, including stacked fractions, in their handhelds exactly as the equations appear in textbooks.  

ROM-Versions:

2.43 (December 4, 2007)
2.53MP (February 15, 2010 includes MathPrint)
2.55MP (January 15, 2011)

You can check the ROM version of your TI-84 Plus S.E. using the following key sequence and reading the number on your screen:

[2nd] [MEM] [1]

Information provided by ticalc.org and Xavier Andréani.

Exam acceptance:

The TI-84 Plus S.E. is permitted (as of September 27, 2008) for use on SAT, ACT, PSAT and AP exams.

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

© Joerg Woerner, September 29, 2008. No reprints without written permission.