I'm trying to think up a way to modify my TI-83+ to increase the RAM it has inside it and I was wondering if it was at all Possible to Remove the original RAM chips, put in a better one, and replace it's battery backed-up storage with Storage in say an SD Card (which would involve modding an SD storage slot)..Is any of this possible to do?
You can't upgrade the RAM. The archive storage is probably the same way but I'll let someone with more experience put down the definitive word.
You could put in an SD card, but you'd have to either: (1) use a USB adapter and write the requisite drivers in z80 assembly or (2) somehow bitbang the SD card protocol over the two bidirectional I/O data lines. Keep in mind that there's no memory that's backed by the backup battery. The function of the backup battery, as documented in this topic, is only to provide a clean shutdown if the AAAs are removed. The Archive is EEPROM, a non-volatile memory that doesn't require an batteries at all. The calculator's RAM is volatile SRAM backed by the main batteries.
Well there goes my whole project -_-
The_Coded wrote:
Well there goes my whole project -_-
How about something smaller to start, like an internally-mounted USB Flash drive or something?
Alex wrote:
You can't upgrade the RAM. The archive storage is probably the same way but I'll let someone with more experience put down the definitive word.

you can ALWAYS upgrade something (unless he's using your calc and you said that he's not allowed to Razz)
but yeah you can always upgrade hardware/software/virtualware ALWAYS.
using a sd card might be a start although you may need to format it (which is easy as π )
and because of that it might give you less room on the card
and the same for the internal usb (but it might be different if you make drivers)
SeeGreatness, YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!
The_Coded wrote:
I'm trying to think up a way to modify my TI-83+ to increase the RAM it has inside it and I was wondering if it was at all Possible to Remove the original RAM chips, put in a better one, and replace it's battery backed-up storage with Storage in say an SD Card (which would involve modding an SD storage slot)..Is any of this possible to do?


Instead, (and if we talk about assembly files) you could write a program which would be able to transform a file into an auto-decompressing / shorter sized version Idea
SeeGreatness wrote:
Alex wrote:
You can't upgrade the RAM. The archive storage is probably the same way but I'll let someone with more experience put down the definitive word.

you can ALWAYS upgrade something (unless he's using your calc and you said that he's not allowed to Razz)
but yeah you can always upgrade hardware/software/virtualware ALWAYS.
using a sd card might be a start although you may need to format it (which is easy as π )
and because of that it might give you less room on the card
and the same for the internal usb (but it might be different if you make drivers)


You cannot "always" upgrade hardware.

Here's a counterexample: you want to upgrade your CPU. However, because the new sockets are pretty much never compatible with the new ones, a motherboard upgrade is almost a given, so you have to upgrade your motherboard as well. However, if you upgrade your motherboard, you lose IDE support, which means that you'd also have to upgrade your hard drives to SATA; you'd also lose PCI support, so you'd have to upgrade your GPU as well; and you'd have to upgrade all your RAM to SATA 3 or 4. And to top it all off, why not upgrade your PSU, because new power requirements, new (or more) cables needed, etc. Except the new PSU doesn't fit in your old chassis, so you end up changing out the chassis as well.

Congratulations on your new computer!

P.S. the flash-SD interface would need to be exactly to-spec with the flash controller being replaced. I highly doubt the interface would fit within the necessary latency and addressing requirements. Instead, if there is any improvement to be made, I suggest a memory bank system - this was done in the old Game Boy (Z80) days when the addressing space was tiny, so you'd switch between banks of memory when I/O occurs.
oldmud0 wrote:
SeeGreatness wrote:
Alex wrote:
You can't upgrade the RAM. The archive storage is probably the same way but I'll let someone with more experience put down the definitive word.

you can ALWAYS upgrade something (unless he's using your calc and you said that he's not allowed to Razz)
but yeah you can always upgrade hardware/software/virtualware ALWAYS.
using a sd card might be a start although you may need to format it (which is easy as π )
and because of that it might give you less room on the card
and the same for the internal usb (but it might be different if you make drivers)


You cannot "always" upgrade hardware.

Here's a counterexample: you want to upgrade your CPU. However, because the new sockets are pretty much never compatible with the new ones, a motherboard upgrade is almost a given, so you have to upgrade your motherboard as well. However, if you upgrade your motherboard, you lose IDE support, which means that you'd also have to upgrade your hard drives to SATA; you'd also lose PCI support, so you'd have to upgrade your GPU as well; and you'd have to upgrade all your RAM to SATA 3 or 4. And to top it all off, why not upgrade your PSU, because new power requirements, new (or more) cables needed, etc. Except the new PSU doesn't fit in your old chassis, so you end up changing out the chassis as well.

Congratulations on your new computer!

P.S. the flash-SD interface would need to be exactly to-spec with the flash controller being replaced. I highly doubt the interface would fit within the necessary latency and addressing requirements. Instead, if there is any improvement to be made, I suggest a memory bank system - this was done in the old Game Boy (Z80) days when the addressing space was tiny, so you'd switch between banks of memory when I/O occurs.

1) adapters will make it fit and if you can't find one you make one
2) who cares about a cool looking case just drill into a piece of wood (or your wall if you're brave enough)
3) and what's wrong with having two power supplies?
SeeGreatness wrote:

1) adapters will make it fit and if you can't find one you make one
2) who cares about a cool looking case just drill into a piece of wood (or your wall if you're brave enough)
3) and what's wrong with having two power supplies?

Different sockets have different pinouts, you cant just make an adapter from one to the other, its not just an issue of dimensions.
You can create your own adaptors made chips to interact with the two devices here is a example fibre-optics. You can't just point light at your computer and think it will interact at all. NO you have to get a photorecepter cell (and a lot of other stuff) so that its compatible you can still do the same for instance you can rig a system to read text off a piece of paper (right now the technology for that hasn't evolved much and it will glitch) BUT you can use it to read commands from dos with the printers (when you could echo a screen to a printer) you just gotta go the extra mile for the labour another instance is HDMI, HDMI is not compatible with video composite but with a adaptor that basically changes the signals around its possible also RCA devices ARE compatible with composite devices although not vise versa without a adaptor because well if you want to find out http://tinyurl.com/rcaandcomposit their but if you would like to talk about a actual "impossible" adaptor please let me know
Okay, you try finding an adapter that lets you use a z80 processer with my Asus tablet then.
Luxen wrote:
Okay, you try finding an adapter that lets you use a z80 processer with my Asus tablet then.

What ports does it have? And please look under the hood as that helps so much.
SeeGreatness wrote:
Luxen wrote:
Okay, you try finding an adapter that lets you use a z80 processer with my Asus tablet then.

What ports does it have? And please look under the hood as that helps so much.


A present just for you!

oldmud0 wrote:
SeeGreatness wrote:
Luxen wrote:
Okay, you try finding an adapter that lets you use a z80 processer with my Asus tablet then.

What ports does it have? And please look under the hood as that helps so much.


A present just for you!


don't you worry I'm on it
adding a demultiplexer ic to hijack the lcd control signals, seperating ports 10/11 from 12/13, add 74hc74 for chip select, use 2n7000 for power,a hc family tri state bus driver,ex hc241, use spi protocol. the secret to making this easy is access to a pair of cpu ports, cut the enable pin to the lcd, use the address pin on the flash chip to succeed on unlocking the ports, once you are able to do this, any number of hc series logic chips do the job. good luck.

Per Robert Norwood
It is possible to use the ASIC control signal to allow direct access to the CPU bus.. anything is possible even adding cell texting.. what I am telling you is how to enable spi protocol on this using native control signals, the implications are huge.

Per Robert noorwood
I've pondered that before, since as you say the data bus and at least one bit of the address bus is broken out across the LCD PCB connector, but as far as I know no one has ever tried to exploit this. It's a very interesting project idea.
Tested, built, and working
  
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