Texas Instruments BA-III Prototype

Fellow calculator collector Michel Zwawiak in France was able to acquire this rare BA-III Prototype from a former Texas Instruments employee working in the early 1980s in the Consumer Products department in Lubbock. TI would have employees use prototypes of potential products and use their input about them. We don't know why the BA-III designation was dropped in favor of BA-II.

Please don't miss the completely different BA-III introduced finally in 1986.

Comparing the design of this BA-III Prototype with the later BA-II reveals not only a changed color scheme but even different display frames.

Dismantling this BA-III Prototype manufactured in May 1983 by Inventec Corporation in Taiwan reveals no surprises, the rigid printed circuit board (PCB) is more or less identical with the later BA-II, TI-30 III, and TI-35 II.

The TP0322 single-chip calculator circuit is encapsulated in a traditional Dual-Inline Plastic package and soldered with bended pins on the PCB.

Inspecting the PCB of this BA-III Prototype calculator brought our attention to a small mark reading BAIII-01D and we started compiling a list of the PCB-Marks on calculators manufactured by OEMs for Texas Instruments.

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

© Joerg Woerner, March 24, 2018. No reprints without written permission.