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Texas Instruments TI-84 PLUS Silver Edition ViewScreen™

Date of introduction:  Jan.7, 2004
 Available: August 2004
Display technology:  LCD dot matrix
New price:    Display size:  8 * 16 characters
Size:  7.5" x 3.3" x 0.85"
 190 x 84 x 22 mm3
   
Weight:  8.3 ounces, 235 grams Serial No:  2024533658
Batteries:  4*AAA + SR44 (35mA) Date of manufacture:  mth 04 year 2004
AC-Adapter:   Origin of manufacture:  China (S)
Precision:  14 Integrated circuits:  ASIC: TI REF 83PLUSB/TA2 or TI-REF 84PLUSB/TA3
 Flash: 29LV160
 Display: Toshiba
T6K04
Memories:      
Program steps:  24k Bytes, 1.5M Bytes Flash ROM Courtesy of:  Joerg Woerner

The TI-84 Plus S.E. ViewScreen Calculator (VSC) is the teacher version of the standard TI-84 Plus Silver Edition. It connects with a special port to a ViewScreen panel via a cable. Placing the panel on the overhead projector enlarges the image of the handheld screen so that each student can follow along. 

The display of the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition sports 64 * 96 dots compared with the 64 * 128 dots of the TI-86 or the 100 * 160 dots of the TI-89. As a consequence introduced Texas Instruments different ViewScreen panels.   

Four ViewScreen panels were available in 2008:

Panel 1: TI-73 VSC, TI-73 Explorer VSC, TI-80 VSC, TI-82 VSC, TI-83 VSC,
   TI-83 Plus VSC, TI-83 Plus Silver Edition VSC, TI-84 Plus VSC,
   TI-84 Plus Silver Edition VSC
Panel 2: TI-89 VSC, TI-89 Titanium VSC, TI-92, TI-92 Plus, Voyage 200
Panel 3: TI-85 VSC (2nd design), TI-86 VSC
Panel 4: TI-Nspire, TI-Nspire CAS, TI-Nspire Touchpad, TI-Nspire CAS Touchpad

As an alternative the TI-Presenter video adapter connects to a TV or other projection device with a video input port. 

From a technical point of view the TI-84 Plus S.E. VSC is almost identical with the students TI-84 Plus S.E.. The first difference you notice is a slightly changed bottom shell of the calculator housing to accommodate the ViewScreen connector.

Dismantling this TI-84 Plus S.E. VSC with Date code I-0404 manufactured in April 2004 by Inventec Corporation in Taiwan reveals a total of two printed circuit boards (PCBs).

The main PCB is identical with the TI-84 Plus S.E. Compared with the already optimized TI-83 Plus Silver Edition the new design sports only 3 chips on one printed circuit board (PCB):

TI REF 83PLUSB/TA2: Z80 microprocessor, RAM, USB-Port 
    and supporting logic
Fujitsu 29LV160: 2M Bytes Flash ROM
Toshiba T6K04: Single-chip 64*120 pixel display driver

The pictures on the right give an enhanced view of the ASIC that clocks the Z80 microprocessor with 15 MHz and incorporates the RAM, USB-Port and logic and the Flash ROM with 2M Bytes capacity. Learn more about the Hardware Architecture of TI’s Graphing Calculators.



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.

A component not easily detected on the printed circuit board (PCB) of the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition is the driver circuit of the LC-Display. It is just a bare chip mounted on a flexible piece of circuit board attached between the display and the main PCB. 

A second PCB is connected with a short piece of flat-cable to the display board. This PCB basically buffers the signals of the LC-Display and feeds them to the external ViewScreen connector.


A serial port of the calculators allows the connection to the Calculator-Based Laboratory system CBL, its successor CBL 2, the Calculator-Based Ranger CBR and its successor CBR 2. Texas Instruments announced June 2002 an optional full-sized QWERTY Keyboard for a more convenient entry of notes into the handhelds.


ROM-Versions:

2.21 (March 2004)
2.22 (August 2004)
2.30 (December 2004)
2.40 (November 2005)
2.41 (May 7, 2006)
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. VSC 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. VSC is permitted (as of September 27, 2007) for use on SAT, ACT, PSAT and AP exams.

 

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

© Joerg Woerner, August 27, 2020. No reprints without written permission.