merthsoft wrote:
ON+2ND+DEL does nothing for me.
I believe you need to do it while tapping the recessed Reset button, similar to removing and re-inserting a AAA battery on the old calculators.
KermMartian wrote:
merthsoft wrote:
ON+2ND+DEL does nothing for me.
I believe you need to do it while tapping the recessed Reset button, similar to removing and re-inserting a AAA battery on the old calculators.

In fact, dont press ON. 2nd+Del while resetting is what works for me.
DJ_O wrote:
BrandonW wrote:
KermMartian wrote:
BrandonW wrote:
I'm not sure if it's actually been stated anywhere, but the OS install/boot combination is no longer ON+DEL, it's ON+2ND+DEL.
That's important to know; thank you. Has the forcible RAM clear key combination also been changed to ON+2ND+CLEAR? Do you know why they would change the combination?


I didn't check or look into ON+CLEAR.

I imagine they changed the combination because you technically aren't supposed to know it (and ON+DEL is now common knowledge).


Unless I am misunderstanding what you mean, I don't think we aren't supposed to know about the key combo, considering my TI-83 Plus Guidebooks (which came in paper form with my 83+ calcs in 2001) mentions it.


I don't think there's any harm in knowing the old one, but now that you can erase all storage once you get in it, I (and I would imagine others) wish it wasn't so easy to get to now.
Haven't spent much time with it yet, but I'm pretty unhappy with the case and the plastic shell of the calculator.

The first time I tried to put the case on to protect the screen, I accidentally put the wrong end in. There are notches on both the case and the top of the calculator, so I figured that was an indication to line them up. Nothing really blocks you from doing this, so with only a slightly heavy amount of force I got it in before realizing it was on wrong. At that point it took a massive amount of effort to get the thing back out, which put (hopefully removable) scratches all over the face of my calc. Obviously I should have tried it the other way when I encountered an above average amount of resistance, but I find the thing horribly unintuitive from a design perspective. The amount of effort it would have taken for them to make this more obvious is trivial. A small piece of plastic to completely prevent it from going on wrong. A small indented diagram on the inside of the case showing the correct direction.

The bottom of the case is somewhat flimsy. This wouldn't be much of a problem, aside from the fact that when using the case to protect the screen, the case has little plastic curves that press against the screen. So basically every time pressure is applied to the top of the case, it will bend and the plastic ridges will smack against your screen. To be fair, they press against the black part of the screen that doesn't have pixels, but it's still against the casing of the screen. What's the point of these? As far as I can tell, they exist to press against the calculator when it's used as a backplate to prevent the flimsy part of the case from flopping around. It's hard to see, but the edges of the case might prevent these from actually smacking the screen, although it's unlikely, and it's unnerving anyway.

As for the face of the calculator, I'm very disappointed. I have never seen a material that moreso emphasizes fingerprints, scratches, lint, etc. than this one. I have the black faceplate, and I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse, but it's incredibly on such an otherwise nice looking calculator.

I'll probably edit this later to talk about the internals. All I can really say so far is that the documentation for the ez80 processor that lies inside is fantastic, although that's Zilog's doing, not TI's.
Gentlefox wrote:
The first time I tried to put the case on to protect the screen, I accidentally put the wrong end in. There are notches on both the case and the top of the calculator, so I figured that was an indication to line them up. Nothing really blocks you from doing this, so with only a slightly heavy amount of force I got it in before realizing it was on wrong.
I have to say that I and someone else both tried to do this with my TI-84 Plus CE, and neither of us could get it past the first notch without extreme force indeed; I don't think a lot of people would do it by accident.

Gentlefox wrote:
At that point it took a massive amount of effort to get the thing back out, which put (hopefully removable) scratches all over the face of my calc. Obviously I should have tried it the other way when I encountered an above average amount of resistance, but I find the thing horribly unintuitive from a design perspective.
Again, I found this a lot more intuitive than you. On the TI-84 Plus, TI-84 Plus Silver Edition, and TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition, the case is shaped similarly, with a closed end at the bottom and an open end at the top. For each model, you slide the case onto the bottom up. Getting the case on incorrectly felt extremely difficult, and holding the ridged parts in my fingers (at opposite ends of the calculator and case) also felt intuitive. With the TI-83 family cases, it was indeed easy to put the case on the wrong way, but starting with the TI-84 Plus, I don't think that's a very common mistake. Out of curiosity, what exactly scratched the face of your calculator? I couldn't find anything on the inside of the slidecase that would scratch the face of the calculator.

Gentlefox wrote:
So basically every time pressure is applied to the top of the case, it will bend and the plastic ridges will smack against your screen. To be fair, they press against the black part of the screen that doesn't have pixels, but it's still against the casing of the screen. What's the point of these?
I think it's so that if you press on the back of the case, it will bend inwards while applying pressure beyond the sides of the screen, instead of pressing directly on the LCD and potentially damaging or cracking it.

Gentlefox wrote:
As for the face of the calculator, I'm very disappointed. I have never seen a material that moreso emphasizes fingerprints, scratches, lint, etc. than this one. I have the black faceplate, and I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse, but it's incredibly on such an otherwise nice looking calculator.
I have the Radical Red one, but the glossy black plastic that surrounds the screen is absolutely a fingerprint magnet; I have repeatedly had to clean it, but I suppose that's the case with many modern electronics with glossy plastic.
KermMartian wrote:
I have to say that I and someone else both tried to do this with my TI-84 Plus CE, and neither of us could get it past the first notch without extreme force indeed; I don't think a lot of people would do it by accident.


I'm normally very cautious with force. My father teaches me about soldering and electronics and such, and I can't count how many times I've said "I can't get it to detach/click in/come apart/etc" and he just grabbed it and used more force. I imagine the majority of people would be comfortable applying more force than I am. With cases in particular, I've noticed that a lot of force is often necessary. The Otterboxes I've owned for various phones have taken near violent levels of force to remove. Interesting that you mention "past the first notch", because that's part of why I thought I was doing it right. It pretty easily fits past the first one, so I thought I was just misaligning it after that one.



KermMartian wrote:
Again, I found this a lot more intuitive than you. On the TI-84 Plus, TI-84 Plus Silver Edition, and TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition, the case is shaped similarly, with a closed end at the bottom and an open end at the top. For each model, you slide the case onto the bottom up. Getting the case on incorrectly felt extremely difficult, and holding the ridged parts in my fingers (at opposite ends of the calculator and case) also felt intuitive. With the TI-83 family cases, it was indeed easy to put the case on the wrong way, but starting with the TI-84 Plus, I don't think that's a very common mistake. Out of curiosity, what exactly scratched the face of your calculator? I couldn't find anything on the inside of the slidecase that would scratch the face of the calculator.


I'm not sure how it got scratched. I had to remove the case by pushing one lip on the side of the case down, and removing it sideways though.

KermMartian wrote:
I think it's so that if you press on the back of the case, it will bend inwards while applying pressure beyond the sides of the screen, instead of pressing directly on the LCD and potentially damaging or cracking it.


I feel like there are a multitude of better ways to do it though, which don't involve pressing on any part of the screen. I recall the TI-84+ case being a lot better about this.

KermMartian wrote:
I have the Radical Red one, but the glossy black plastic that surrounds the screen is absolutely a fingerprint magnet; I have repeatedly had to clean it, but I suppose that's the case with many modern electronics with glossy plastic.


Why make it glossy in the first place though? The only thing it accomplished (aside from looking pretty in pre-smudge pictures) is to cause glare that makes the 2nd and Alpha texts harder to read.
First impression: USB doesn't work. No devices present except hubs. Is it being stubborn about accepting its address? No, nothing in dmesg. Well, let's try unloading and reloading ohci/ehci-hcd anyway. Nope, no difference. How about if I use the cable supplied with the calc, and plug it into the front panel instead of into the hub on my desk? Still no difference. Try the laptop? (...taking forever to boot...) Nope. TI-84+... a, batteries are dead, have to recharge them before I can try to diagnose this with USB8x. How about the 84+CSE? Try to send a variable, Error in Xmit. Huh.

Turns out the USB socket is remarkably tight; it takes quite a bit of force to push the mini-B (or A) plug all the way in. More force than a USB device ought to require.

I guess the moral of the story is are you sure it's actually plugged in?
I think most of us had that exact issue Floppy Smile.
FloppusMaximus wrote:
First impression: USB doesn't work. No devices present except hubs. Is it being stubborn about accepting its address? No, nothing in dmesg. Well, let's try unloading and reloading ohci/ehci-hcd anyway. Nope, no difference. How about if I use the cable supplied with the calc, and plug it into the front panel instead of into the hub on my desk? Still no difference. Try the laptop? (...taking forever to boot...) Nope. TI-84+... a, batteries are dead, have to recharge them before I can try to diagnose this with USB8x. How about the 84+CSE? Try to send a variable, Error in Xmit. Huh.

Turns out the USB socket is remarkably tight; it takes quite a bit of force to push the mini-B (or A) plug all the way in. More force than a USB device ought to require.

I guess the moral of the story is are you sure it's actually plugged in?


Welcome back Floppus! Smile

I hope that the USB plug isn't too fragile, because if it's hard to plug the cable in, maybe this could cause some people to wiggle it when unplugging it and bend the USB jack, breaking it.
I didnt have any difficulty with USB, but I did find the slide case a slight bit harder to get off; of course, I'm likely spoiled by my 84+SE, which has had its nubs sanded down.

I dont have a CSE to compare, but I feel the calc is faster and EXTREMELY light; Im scared of breaking it. Ill probably want to glue some weights to it. The buttons are the perfect [briskness?], though a little close together.

My model is the black one, btw.

so, when are we getting places on ticalc.org and Cemetech for uploading files?
  
Register to Join the Conversation
Have your own thoughts to add to this or any other topic? Want to ask a question, offer a suggestion, share your own programs and projects, upload a file to the file archives, get help with calculator and computer programming, or simply chat with like-minded coders and tech and calculator enthusiasts via the site-wide AJAX SAX widget? Registration for a free Cemetech account only takes a minute.

» Go to Registration page
Page 2 of 2
» All times are UTC - 5 Hours
 
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum

 

Advertisement