So I figured this might actually be an interesting topic to discuss, do you guys think TI will ever actually remove the ASM options from the 83/84 series calculators? Smile

Nyt.
I don't think they really care about the 83+/84+ series anymore. Well, especially not the 83+, maybe the 84+ a little, but how long has it already been since 2.55MP? Newer models (read: only newer, not better in any other way) like the 82A and the 84+T don't have assembly though. They've also removed on-calc assembly on the CE, who knows, maybe they'll remove external assembly too. In any case the Nspire had to be hacked. In any case it looks like the 83+/84+ series was the most assembly-friendly so it can only get worse from here.
Not 100% sure - there is a lot of software out there that is of major benefit to calculator users - commercial stuff too.

If people do too many naughty things however anything can change - just look at the 2048-bit keys no with no public release.
Yeah true, I don’t really know what you can do in ASM cheating wise that you can’t make in BASIC albeit slower but maybe I’m missing something. Still at the moment the official docs do cover ASM so maybe it’s more about stopping students inadvertently resetting RAM etc rather than stopping ASM programming fullstop?
tr1p1ea wrote:
...
If people do too many naughty things however anything can change - just look at the 2048-bit keys no with no public release.


Weren't the 84's 512? bit keys factored, not publicly released by TI?
I think its unlikely, although not out of the question that they would release an update for the CE that would somehow prevent arbitrary code execution, but I would not be surprised if their next generation of products would have such limitations.
EDIT: Its not even been 2 months and TI has done it on the CE series.

Regarding the 82 Advanced and 84+T not allowing asm, you have to remember that these are designed for the European market and the rules pertaining to what devices are allowed in exam rooms are very different from those in the US, and are generally more specific and strict (for example, the mandatory LED).
SM84CE wrote:
tr1p1ea wrote:
...
If people do too many naughty things however anything can change - just look at the 2048-bit keys no with no public release.


Weren't the 84's 512? bit keys factored, not publicly released by TI?

Yes, which is why TI added the 2048 bit signatures and sent a takedown notice to Brandon. Of course, the keys were length indexed, but that's another story Rolling Eyes

Also, there's absolutely no way TI will release a new OS for the 83+ / 84+ series, they haven't updated it in many years and that presumably means that the dev team has moved on, so there would be nobody to actually put together an update.
TI released several freeware app signing keys for calcs - up until the OS signing keys were factored, in which case they were forced to change their stance on community apps.
Well I think it’s a wait and see game, the last update for the CE was August last year and as mentioned clearly the Nspire CX is their flagship model these days so here’s hoping they won’t go back and block ASM on the CE. Also they actually advertise the ASM feature on the Specs page so my guess is that this community won’t be the only one disappointed if they removed it from current generations. Finally I’m from the UK and own a CE+T, what calculator are you guys referring to that doesn’t work with ASM as this one works fine with Portal etc? Or is there a non color 84+T? Sorry If I’m misunderstanding Smile!

Nyt!
Nytician wrote:
Finally I’m from the UK and own a CE+T, what calculator are you guys referring to that doesn’t work with ASM as this one works fine with Portal etc? Or is there a non color 84+T? Sorry If I’m misunderstanding Smile!

Nyt!

You can write asm programs, but you can't sign apps.

And yes, I think when people say TI-84+, they generally mean the non-European one.

Nytician wrote:
what calculator are you guys referring to that doesn’t work with ASM as this one works fine with Portal etc? Or is there a non color 84+T?


All of these are different models of the 84+ series and the model should be specified in full to avoid confusion:
84+
84+SE
84+CSE
84+CE
84+T
84+CET or CE-T
84+CE-T Python Edition
Thank TI for the chaos. If I have missed any calculator you should also say its name in full.

The ones with a C are colored, the ones with CE have an eZ80. The one with "Python Edition" has Python support. The ones with T have an exam LED. Also, the 84+ is not non-European, it's worldwide. The only thing is that you can't use it on some exams where you could use an 84+T.

If you want to talk about the CE, you shouldn't use "84+" because that refers to the original monochrome model (which doesn't have any suffixes). You can use CE unambiguously, though. Do not imply the "CE" part. Saying "84+" is sufficiently ambiguous to drain your CE battery up to 50% faster. Even Chuck Norris can't imply the "CE" part. Every time you use "84+" to refer to a CE, an 84+ is bricked because of incompatible software. Whenever you say "84+" while referring to the CE, a child in Africa dies from starvation. Every time you mean CE and say "84+", the unholy child weeps the blood of virgins, and Russian hackers pwn your Cemetech account. He who implies the "CE" part shall be absorbed into the abyss. When man stares into the abyss, the abyss stares back. A monster will come to your bed at night and eat your CE right from under your pillow. If you try to catch the monster it will also eat you. Implying "CE" summons tainted souls into the realm of the living. If you imply the "CE" part you will die 2 years faster. If you want to talk about the CE, say "CE" or "84+CE" or even "84 Plus CE", but never "84+". Do not imply "CE". If you imply the "CE" you are giving in to Them and their blasphemous ways which doom us all to inhuman toil for the One whose Name cannot be expressed in the Basic Multilingual Plane, he comes. "84+"-as-CE will liquify the n​erves of the sentient whilst you observe, your psyche withering in the onslⱥught of horror. CE-implication is the cancer that is killing Cemetech and has already killed all other calculator forums it is too late it is too late we cannot be saved the trangession of a chi͡ld ensures "84+" will consume every other word (except for the CE which it cannot, as previously prophesied). dear lord help us how can anyone survive this scourge using 84+ to refer to CE has doomed humanity to an eternity of dread torture and security holes using 84+ as an abbreviation for 84+CE establishes a breach between this world and the dread realm of c͒ͪo͛ͫrrupt variables (like Casio variables, but more corrupt) a mere glimpse of the world of people who say 84+ but mean CE will ins​tantly transport a programmer's consciousness into a world of ceaseless screaming, he comes, the pestilent slithy CE-infection wil​l devour your calculator programs and existence for all time like TI-BASIC only worse he comes he comes do not fi​ght he com̡e̶s, ̕h̵i​s un̨ho͞ly radiańcé destro҉ying all enli̍̈́̂̈́ghtenment, CE fanaticism lea͠ki̧n͘g fr̶ǫm ̡yo​͟ur eye͢s̸ ̛l̕ik͏e liq​uid pain, the song of the 84+ will exti​nguish the voices of mor​tal man from the sp​here I can see it can you see ̲͚̖͔̙î̩́t̲͎̩̱͔́̋̀ it is beautiful t​he final snuffing of the lie​s of Man ALL IS LOŚ͖̩͇̗̪̏̈́T ALL I​S LOST the pon̷y he comes he c̶̮omes he comes the ich​or permeates all MY FACE MY FACE ᵒh god no NO NOO̼O​O NΘ stop the an​*̶͑̾̾​̅ͫ͏̙̤g͇̫͛͆̾ͫ̑͆l͖͉̗̩̳̟̍ͫͥͨe̠̅s ͎a̧͈͖r̽̾̈́͒͑e n​ot rè̑ͧ̌aͨl̘̝̙̃ͤ͂̾̆ ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ ISͮ̂҉̯͈͕̹̘̱ TO͇̹̺ͅƝ̴ȳ̳ TH̘Ë͖́̉ ͠P̯͍̭O̚​N̐Y̡ H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ
tr1p1ea wrote:
TI released several freeware app signing keys for calcs - up until the OS signing keys were factored, in which case they were forced to change their stance on community apps.

Eh ? TI's stance wrt. community FlashApps had changed years before the monochrome TI-Z80 and TI-68k FlashApp and OS signing keys were factored in a non-distributed manner by Benjamin Moody, then manually distributed work (1 key and part of a second one), then automatically distributed work (a dozen keys by RSALS, wasting over half of the computing power because we unknowingly let the default quorum of 2) Wink

TI published the private 0104 key for the 83+, which was a boon to the community; from that point, they couldn't undo the publication. But they didn't publish the 010A key for 84+-only FlashApps, for instance. The story on the TI-68k side was very different: one day, TI simply stopped replying to signing requests for community FlashApps, which helped kill the stream of work and updates to e.g. the GTC on-calc C compiler. Later, ExtendeD made Flashappy to work around that, a little while before the FlashApp signing keys were factored and made the usage of Flashappy moot.

The only TI public key factorable by third parties which didn't exist at the time of the community factoring effort in 2009 was the 010F key for FlashApps targeting the 84+CSE, a model released in 2013. TI didn't release the private key either, but it's certainly just the continuation of the policy not to release such information, instead of being retaliation for the community factoring effort (3+ years later, they could have used a larger key for 84+CSE FlashApps, instead of sticking to the easily factorable 512-bit size !). The factoring of the 010F key was a manually distributed solo job, but IIRC, you knew that.
Haha well that was a fun read FghSgh lol, TLDR: I own a Texas Instruments 84+CE-T, can I use ASM like ICE... and at risk of another wall of text, what is ‘signing’ (maybe I’ll just google it lol), does unsigned mean I can’t use ASM apps at all?

Thanks for your responses it’s fun seeing new replies to this! Smile

Happy Quaranteening,

Nyt!
Nytician wrote:
what is ‘signing’, does unsigned mean I can’t use ASM apps at all?!


Signing means that a party (TI in this case) has approved the distribution and installation of the software. They have a private key that they can use to sign stuff, and you can check if it's signed with the public key. It is possible to get the private key from the public key, but you'd need to factor a 2048-bit integer into its two prime factors for that and that's currently not really possible. They used to use 512-bit keys, which we factored and released, which meant that everyone could act like they were TI and sign their apps themselves, essentially telling your calc "yes your makers (which means TI) approved that this software can run on you". Apps need to be signed, programs do not (because TI wanted to create an app store in the '90s and they wanted to charge money for releasing apps). Anyway there are multiple signing keys depending on the model and on the application itself (for example there's a freeware key and a proprietary key for the 83+/84+ series, where some features like limiting the number of executions before the app deletes itself are only available with proprietary keys (which only TI has)). There are no known keys on the CE which is why we can't have apps on it (or more likely, you guys can't have apps on it, I don't have a CE). Also OSes need to be signed which is why you can't put a custom OS on the CE (you can on the 83+/84+ series because of a few exploits that disable checking if it's signed).

Oops, this was not supposed to turn out this long.
Signing a program works a lot like signing a document. It lets you verify that someone wrote a program, or at least approved it. It's very difficult to fake a signature - it requires you to find the key that was used to sign it, which took months on the old calcs and is basically impossible on the new ones. The boot code checks the signature of an OS before installing it, and the OS checks the signature of an app before installing it. If TI did not sign the app/OS, it will refuse to install it. Assembly programs are not signed, and there's not much that an app can do that an ASM program can't, so it's not a huge deal that the signing keys are unavailable on the CE.
Ahh okay so I’m short aside from installing a full custom OS, shells like Cesium etc will work from ASM making it seemingly irrelevant anyhow? Thanks for posts both!

Nyt.
Well, starting from the OS 5.5.1 version released today, TI has removed access to assembly programs on the 83PCE and 83PCE EP, which will undoubtedly extend to on the whole TI-eZ80 series: 83PCE, 84+CE, 84+CE-T, 83PCE EP, 84+CE PE...

I too doubt that TI will release new versions for the monochrome models.
  
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