I only recently found out about the self-test tool (found by pressing [Mode]>[Alpha]>[S]) TI put into the TI 84+ lineup. Most of it is pretty self explanatory but there are a few options I'd like to clear up. I'll be focusing on the CE.

Right before the calculator starts the diagnostic, it brings up highlighted text that says "Start?" This text is in either red or green. Does red mean it already detects something wrong?

For option 4. On my physical CE I could not get the LED on the side of my calculator to light up, is that normal? It lights up every time I plug my calculator into my computer so it's obviously working.

For option 6. what does the 'prot' part stand for? And what would be the result if the FLASH had actually failed the test?

For option 7. what does 'SHIP' stand for and what would be the result if the RAM failed? Wouldn't the calculator be disabled before you could even get to the diagnostic section?

For option 9. if 9 is highlighted green, I assume it means that the USB port working? (It's red in my screenshot because I was using CEmu) How exactly does it test that without actually being plugged into something?

For option 0. what is 0 even for? It doesn't seem to do anything when I select it. I assumed it would switch between different modes for the USB port but it doesn't seem to. Also, what do 'EMI' and 'ESD' stand for and what do they mean?

I'm hoping to create a video about all this so any clarification would be greatly appreciated before I make it.

EDIT: Done! I've made the video!

Don't have a color calculator? Don't worry, LAX18 shared a link to a website that covers several monochrome TI calculators! You can check it out here.

4. Testing LED. You don't have one.
6. Protected flash pages. Failed would be printed
7. Shipment mode. The mode the calculator is put in when shipped from the factory.
9. You need another CE to do this test. It sends 100 packets back and forth, with host and client diagnostics.
0. You need another CE to do this test. Same test as above, with unlimited packets. This is done for electronic emissions testing to comply with FCC standards. You can read more about it here: https://www.ti.com/sc/docs/apps/msp/intrface/usb/emitest.pdf

Thank you Mateo for answering all those questions!

I'm currently making a video about this and I was wondering if someone could expand on what the flash pages means?

I assume P means protected and U means unprotected, but could someone explain why those specific sections are the way they are, why they're in a grid like that, and why column 7 only has one element?

As you'd expect, the protected 9 pages are the operating system itself, while the remaining pages represent the user-accessible Flash for the Archive. Flash chips are usually organized into large and small sectors, where each large sector can be further subdivided into small sectors. 71 sectors is an interesting figure: a 16Mbit Flash chip could have 64 256Kb (32KB?) "large" sectors or be organized as 512 32Kb (4KB) "small" sectors, in which case the count of 71 would be 63 large sectors, and one large sector instead broken down as 8 small sectors.

Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of clarification on WikiTI about this.

Datamath shows a W29GL-series Flash chip, which doesn't appear to come in a 16-megabit variant so I'll just refer to the W29GL032 which has a "Total 63 uniform sectors + eight 4k-Word/8k-Byte sectors" option. So it's got one sector split into smaller eraseable units.

When it says "this will clear all memory", is this just the RAM, or Archived files, too?

This actually just resets the RAM, not *everything*, idk if it resets the RTC though, I haven't tried this in a while...

It depends on the nature of the RAM failure. If there was one bad bit in some lowly, obscure corner of RAM, the system might appear to operate just fine (for a while anyway). So tests like these are intended to test all the RAM locations for any obvious faults.

(At the risk of rambling, I feel in the mood to make a little anecdote: RAM failures are often (usually?) not all-or-nothing. I ran my desktop computer for an unknown period of time (could have been years!) with undetected bad RAM, cursing what I thought were really weird kernel driver and application bugs that made no sense. It wasn't until one day when I started getting strange behavior and crashes in programs that literally never misbehaved before, on a system where I hadn't done any updates or changes at all, that I finally realized that I'd better check the condition of the hardware. And booting into a RAM test program almost immediately showed up faults in one of my RAM modules. Removing that bad module has made my OS more reliable and stable, I think, than it's ever been before. And the worst and rather embarrassing thing about all this was that I knew better. I had had experience with this before, and yet I somehow let myself become so confident that my hardware was fine that I never bothered doing this diagnostic test ages ago when I ought to have.)

The Wiki kind of does, in a roundabout way. All sectors in the flash chip are 64 K, except for one. For the flash chip, the "boot sectors" are a block of 64 K broken into smaller sectors. For 4 MB chips, that 64 K block is broken into eight 8 K sectors. "Bottom-boot" means that the smaller sectors are at the bottom of the address space.

Unfortunately, TI seem to have taken "boot sectors" more literally than the datasheet suggests it should be; nothing in any datasheet I've seen suggests that the boot sectors are more reliable than other sectors. Nevertheless, TI put the boot code in those 8 K sectors. Because the new boot ROM is larger than 64 K, an additional, normal 64 K sector is also reserved for the boot ROM.

In previous models, the top-boot design was used, and only one 16 K sector was used for booting. The certificate was then composed of two 8 K sectors, with one being the active certificate, and the other being a temporary; the OS would erase the temporary sector, copy the new data into it, and then invalidate the original certificate, so a crash couldn't accidentally erase your certificate. Now, all eight 8 K sectors are locked for the boot ROM, and the certificate is an entire 64 K sector, with no backup. Seems like typically short-sighted engineering from TI.

Hey I got another beta for the video! Assuming there are no factual errors (there always are ) or clarifications needed, I'll be uploading it in a day or so.
[Redacted]
Big thanks to PT_ for getting me so much footage!

Not a big mistake, but
1:10: "copywrite" should be "copyright"
Otherwise, the information looks factual to me I'd say I even learned a thing or two

I finished! You can view the final video on my videos thread here: https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14760

I suspose I will post this link here. It covers the TIOS Self Test for the TI-30X SOLAR, TI-30Xa SOLAR, TI-36X SOLAR, TI Galaxy 9x, TI Galaxy 40, TI-80, TI-81, TI-82, TI-83, TI-83 Plus, TI-84 Plus, TI-85, TI-86, Business Edge, and Voyager 200.

https://www.rskey.org/~mwsebastian/selftest/ti_test.htm

Just in case someone needs it in the future.