Texas Instruments TI-30X IIS (Target)

This blue colored TI-30X IIS was manufactured exclusively for the retailer Target. It was released for the Back-to-School 2021 campaign together with its pink sibling and the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition in the colors of blue, white and red.

Disassembling this model of the TI-30X IIS manufactured May 2020 by Kinpo Electronics, Inc. in the Philippines reveals a well known internal construction centered around an unknown single-chip calculator circuit and powered by four small solar cells and a CR2025 backup battery. We discovered already in 2004 with Inventec Shanghai, Kinpo Electronics, Inc. and Nam Tai Electronics, Inc. three different contract manufacturers for the TI-30X IIS. Comparing two calculators with Date codes K-0304 and K-0409 yields no significant differences.

Inspecting the PCB of this TI-30X IIS calculator brought our attention to two small marks reading SR16N/N1-11 and SR16/SR16B-23, we noticed similar marks already with other Slide Rule calculators manufactured by Kinpo Electronics and started compiling a list of the PCB-Marks on calculators manufactured by OEMs for Texas Instruments.

This design was used in Summer 2011 by four retailers: Target, Fred Meyer, Meijer and Shopko. In Summer 2012 Office Max added the design to its selection.
In Summer 2021 three other retailers used the "Lightning Blue" design but their box used a different Universal Product Code (UPC): Meijer, Office Depot and Staples (in alphabetical order).

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

© Joerg Woerner, August 3, 2021. No reprints without written permission.