- Patrick Verstrepen's Personal Collection of Prototypes
- 04 Aug 2020 01:56:41 pm
- Last edited by mr womp womp on 26 Oct 2021 10:05:58 pm; edited 2 times in total
Patrick Verstrepen worked as an engineering supervisor for Texas Instruments from 2001 to 2010. In broad terms, he worked on new product releases as a product specialist/bug tester and trained the support staff. In this role, he of course, ended up with a remarkable collection of prototypes (internally referred to as beta or pre-production models), which I believe to be the largest ever assembled. He has approximately 30 prototypes of graphing calculators, which is about as many as both me and critor's collections combined 
EDIT: no longer the case but still a very impressive collection.
We've know about his collection for a few years now, but for the first time, he has agreed to share pictures of a few of these prototypes. I'll start off with the prototypes that had not been discovered by the community until now.
First up, a TI-83 Plus SE prototype named "TI-83 Plus 2", S/N 016
Aside from the obvious name change, there is also no black bar above the F1-F5 keys, which gives those function keys pretty bad contrast and I would assume that's why it was added. He refers to this calculator as the "Zonder Silver Edition". I am not quite sure why that is. Perhaps "Zonder" is the code name for the TI-83+SE (for which we haven't identified the codename as of now)
EDIT: its just dutch for "without", so "without silver edition" because its an "83 Plus 2". Not the codename, not even close.
Next up, a TI-89 Titanium prototype with no name.
Patrick has 2 of these, the serial numbers on the back use the strange "TR" nomenclature, which was used in the early 2000s to denote testing units. We first found out about this nomenclature back in 2014 when a TI-84+ prototype surfaced in China. The serial numbers for his 2 units are "1TR 5172" and "1TR 5168".
From here onwards are the protos that had already been spotted by the community. That being said, some of these are still extremely rare and collectible.
A TI-83+ prototype named XX-X, which was just recently uncovered in May by Joerg from the Datamath museum.
A TI-Nspire DVT 1.2 prototype named "TI-XXXXXXXXXXX"
A TI-Nspire CAS DVT 1.2 prototype named "TI-XXXXXXXXXXX"
A TI-Nspire CAS P1-DVT1 prototype with no name. He owns 2 of them! (S/N 000375 and 000067).
And finally, a TI-Nspire CAS+ PVT prototype. I'm not sure which one this is, he has written that he has a PVT1.1, which is relatively common, and 2 "P1 PVT", which as far as I know, hasn't been spotted.
Huge thanks to Patrick for taking the time to share some of his collection with me.
EDIT: no longer the case but still a very impressive collection.
We've know about his collection for a few years now, but for the first time, he has agreed to share pictures of a few of these prototypes. I'll start off with the prototypes that had not been discovered by the community until now.
First up, a TI-83 Plus SE prototype named "TI-83 Plus 2", S/N 016
Aside from the obvious name change, there is also no black bar above the F1-F5 keys, which gives those function keys pretty bad contrast and I would assume that's why it was added. He refers to this calculator as the "Zonder Silver Edition". I am not quite sure why that is. Perhaps "Zonder" is the code name for the TI-83+SE (for which we haven't identified the codename as of now)
EDIT: its just dutch for "without", so "without silver edition" because its an "83 Plus 2". Not the codename, not even close.
Next up, a TI-89 Titanium prototype with no name.
Patrick has 2 of these, the serial numbers on the back use the strange "TR" nomenclature, which was used in the early 2000s to denote testing units. We first found out about this nomenclature back in 2014 when a TI-84+ prototype surfaced in China. The serial numbers for his 2 units are "1TR 5172" and "1TR 5168".
From here onwards are the protos that had already been spotted by the community. That being said, some of these are still extremely rare and collectible.
A TI-83+ prototype named XX-X, which was just recently uncovered in May by Joerg from the Datamath museum.
A TI-Nspire DVT 1.2 prototype named "TI-XXXXXXXXXXX"
A TI-Nspire CAS DVT 1.2 prototype named "TI-XXXXXXXXXXX"
A TI-Nspire CAS P1-DVT1 prototype with no name. He owns 2 of them! (S/N 000375 and 000067).
And finally, a TI-Nspire CAS+ PVT prototype. I'm not sure which one this is, he has written that he has a PVT1.1, which is relatively common, and 2 "P1 PVT", which as far as I know, hasn't been spotted.
Huge thanks to Patrick for taking the time to share some of his collection with me.
Neither of them are P1 PVT though... 
