Right so, I picked up a couple used TI-83+ Silver Edition calculators from eBay for super cheap, hoping I could repair them.
What I didn't expect was the odd nature in the way they were broken.
Both power up, and the screens are corrupt - but the calculator's seem to be working fine otherwise. This would lead me to believe that it's an issue with the flex-cable going from the main board to the display board.
One calculator is like 90% usable - only the top row of characters really corrupts. The other is really bad and very difficult to see anything, but it does work if you fight through the corruption.
Okay, but here's the WEIRD PART.
Both TI-83+ Silvers have the Detached Solutions "Puzzle Pack" installed in the Applications menu. (One is older version that had copyrighted names, and the other one is newer).
Anyway, once I boot into Puzzle Pack, the screen works 100% perfectly.
Not kinda.
Not sorta.
100% Perfectly!
This is really odd to me, because it means that the flex cable is working perfectly fine. I was able to play all four games in the puzzle pack, on both calcs, and there was ZERO corruption or issues playing. It worked flawlessly.
The title screens also looked fine.
It's weird that ASM games would work perfectly but the OS does not.
One of the two calcs has MirageOS on it. Mirage loads up, but unlike PuzzlePack MirageOS does have corrupt graphics, as well as UncleWorm, but it doesn't corrupt as bad as the OS. Strangely though, despite MirageOS and UW being corrupted, PuzzlePack still works flawlessly on that same calc.
Anyway, I don't wanna goto the effort of soldering my own flex cable if the issue is with the OS.
On the other hand, maybe timing of the PuzzlePack writes to the screen quicker than the OS or something, and it compensates for a weak signal on the flex cable?
Not sure. Any ideas? Anyone seen anything like this before? I tried googling and couldn't really find anything.
What I didn't expect was the odd nature in the way they were broken.
Both power up, and the screens are corrupt - but the calculator's seem to be working fine otherwise. This would lead me to believe that it's an issue with the flex-cable going from the main board to the display board.
One calculator is like 90% usable - only the top row of characters really corrupts. The other is really bad and very difficult to see anything, but it does work if you fight through the corruption.
Okay, but here's the WEIRD PART.
Both TI-83+ Silvers have the Detached Solutions "Puzzle Pack" installed in the Applications menu. (One is older version that had copyrighted names, and the other one is newer).
Anyway, once I boot into Puzzle Pack, the screen works 100% perfectly.
Not kinda.
Not sorta.
100% Perfectly!
This is really odd to me, because it means that the flex cable is working perfectly fine. I was able to play all four games in the puzzle pack, on both calcs, and there was ZERO corruption or issues playing. It worked flawlessly.
The title screens also looked fine.
It's weird that ASM games would work perfectly but the OS does not.
One of the two calcs has MirageOS on it. Mirage loads up, but unlike PuzzlePack MirageOS does have corrupt graphics, as well as UncleWorm, but it doesn't corrupt as bad as the OS. Strangely though, despite MirageOS and UW being corrupted, PuzzlePack still works flawlessly on that same calc.
Anyway, I don't wanna goto the effort of soldering my own flex cable if the issue is with the OS.
On the other hand, maybe timing of the PuzzlePack writes to the screen quicker than the OS or something, and it compensates for a weak signal on the flex cable?
Not sure. Any ideas? Anyone seen anything like this before? I tried googling and couldn't really find anything.