I've seen a post about a guy using some of the pins on the dock of a ti-nspire, and i was just wondering why it would be impossible to get sound to come out from the mini USB port instead, like when I play music from a ti-84 +, i use the i/o port and then have a 2.5mm to 3.5mm converter, then a wire that goes from 3.5mm i/o male to mini USB male (the speaker i use has a mini USB port, not an i/o port), and well of course, there is a mini USB female port on the ti-nspire, wouldn't it just be simpler to use the little wire that came with the calculator (to connect 2 mini-USB ports together) and have the music come out that way?

I am a bit confused to what you are asking here, but if I am following this right, you want to know why we don't use the miniUSB port on a nspire to output music?

I think it's mainly because most speakers don't have mini USB ports and instead use your standard 3.5 jack, also I am fairly certain that it is harder to output sound via USB, probably more-so on the nspire, but as someone who doesn't program ASM I don't know the specifics on programming sound via USB.

edit: Also, you mentioned that you use a 2.5 to 3.5 to miniUSB setup to connect your calculator to the speakers. Does this actually work to output sound? If so, can anyone explain how it does, because it just sounds like it shouldn't work at all.

Im wondering if there is still a header on the CE PCB for the port, just that it isnt included in the manufacture. It might be possible to mod one to include. Also this probably shouldnt be in the 'Your Projects' section of the boards.

The type of trickery thats use with the IO port might not be as simple to achieve via USB without it being dangerous. Normally you would require some kind of peripheral or at the very least a simple interface board of some kind. The PIC18F is cheap and comes with USB support for example.

http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/devclass_docs/ is a starting point, though I'm not sure we have the CPU power to drive it.

yes, it works fine haha, the input on my speaker is actually a mini usb, thats why it seems quite illogical for me to be using the i/o port...

I believe he was talking about the Nspire, not the new 84+ CE