Omnimaga
Calculator Community => TI Calculators => General Calculator Help => Topic started by: TC01 on August 03, 2010, 10:53:04 pm
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My TI-89 Titanium came preloaded with language localization apps- German, French, and Spanish. I assume all Titaniums do.
I don't speak either of these languages (I'm a native English speaker), and since combined they take up a reasonably large amount of space, I decided to delete them to give me more memory.
I deleted the German app- and found my calculator was locked up. I did a RAM reset (using ON+2ND+LEFT+RIGHT) reinstalled KerNO, and used Stefan Heule's backup utility (http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/430/43018.html) to restore my settings, and now the calculator appears to work fine.
My question is this: is my calculator unstable now without it? Can I do the same for the other language localization apps? I can deal with the crashes easily enough, but if what I'm doing is leaving my Titanium unstable, I'll send the German app back to my calc.
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I deleted all of my lanugage apps and it works fine. I can't see any reason why it should be unstable.
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I deleted all of my lanugage apps and it works fine. I can't see any reason why it should be unstable.
That's good to hear, but did you have the "calculator locking up" problem too? Or not?
I used TI Connect's Device Explorer to do it, by the way. And that's because previously, when I was deleting the Cabri app from the VAR-LINK menu I got a "Crash prevented" message in the bottom of the screen from PreOS (which I was using at the time). I then tried it with the Device Explorer and this didn't happen.
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No, I never did have my calc crash (I actually deleted all of the built in apps except 2 of them), but I still think your calc in alright.
As long as you don't have any more problems in the future, I think it is safe to assume you calc is ok. If problems persist, you might want to try resending the OS. That might fix it.
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Okay, thanks apcalc.
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Indeed, it's rather weird that removing apps can make your calculator crash. Maybe some other program left your calculator in an unstable state ?
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Indeed, it's rather weird that removing apps can make your calculator crash. Maybe some other program left your calculator in an unstable state ?
Maybe. I know I had some problems before I installed Hw3 Patch, but that's to be expected, and I reinstalled the OS before installing Hw3 Patch.
What would I need to do to make it stable again? Do another RAM clear? Reinstall the OS?
I just deleted the Spanish app, and my calculator now says BUSY in the corner of the screen and has automatically disabled the Apps desktop. When I reenabled it, I got an address error, but fortunately KerNO intercepted it. So I did a RAM clear and now the calculator works perfectly again.
I then tried deleting the French app (the only one left) with the Apps Desktop off. Didn't help, because when I turned it back on, I got another address error- or at least I assume I did. I forgot to reinstall KerNO.
Also, on a semi-related note, what app is "Estad Espanol"? It's not taking up as much memory as the language localization apps but I don't know what it's for.
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Statistic Spanish (Stats) perhaps? I only have a normal TI-89 and I can't seem to remember what APPS it came with (if any). That was quite some time ago that I bought it though.
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Statistic Spanish (Stats) perhaps? I only have a normal TI-89 and I can't seem to remember what APPS it came with (if any). That was quite some time ago that I bought it though.
I think you're right.
In any event, when I deleted that one, KerNO gave me an Illegal Instruction error message, but my calculator appeared to work fine afterwards despite that. I did a RAM clear anyway, and now I'm going to reinstall the OS.
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It's really odd that deleting all these preinstalled apps is causing such a hassle. Something has got to be interfering with them.
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And I know that before this, I was deleting apps fine. The only app that I ever had trouble deleting was Cabri, and as I said even that worked after I sent it back and used the Device Explorer. I had installed and deleted other applications since.
This was when I was using PreOS, not KerNO, I only recently switched to KerNO. PreOS gave me a "crash intercepted" message at the bottom of the screen.
Could KerNO be causing the problem? Does it work on the latest Titanium hardware and with the latest Titanium OS?
Or could installing GTC be related to the problem? I used BrandonW's resign68k to sign it with the 89 app key (since it was signed with the community key and I didn't want to install FlashAppy), and that was the last app I installed.
And when I reinstall the OS, should I use TI-Connect's OSDownloader instead of just sending it to my calculator?
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I really don't know what could be causing it. I don't know what the difference is in sending the OS through TI-Connect normally or using the OSDownloader . You could check the readme and see if any of those programs list compatibility problems with the Titanium. I don't think Re-signing something would cause such a problem.
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As AOC wrote, check the compatibility of KerNO and of your other programs with the Titanium. But neither KerNO nor PreOS are supposed to interfere with FlashApps the way you describe:
I just deleted the Spanish app, and my calculator now says BUSY in the corner of the screen and has automatically disabled the Apps desktop. When I reenabled it, I got an address error, but fortunately KerNO intercepted it. So I did a RAM clear and now the calculator works perfectly again.
I then tried deleting the French app (the only one left) with the Apps Desktop off. Didn't help, because when I turned it back on, I got another address error- or at least I assume I did. I forgot to reinstall KerNO.
so I think that there's something else...
I'm not aware of GTC being horribly unstable, so I'd start by looking elsewhere.
Reinstall the OS, then reinstall HW3Patch, then PreOS or KerNO (the latter is enough as a crash protection), PreOS is necessary only for "kernel-based" programs (which are a minority).
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As AOC wrote, check the compatibility of KerNO and of your other programs with the Titanium. But neither KerNO nor PreOS are supposed to interfere with FlashApps the way you describe:
I just deleted the Spanish app, and my calculator now says BUSY in the corner of the screen and has automatically disabled the Apps desktop. When I reenabled it, I got an address error, but fortunately KerNO intercepted it. So I did a RAM clear and now the calculator works perfectly again.
I then tried deleting the French app (the only one left) with the Apps Desktop off. Didn't help, because when I turned it back on, I got another address error- or at least I assume I did. I forgot to reinstall KerNO.
so I think that there's something else...
I'm not aware of GTC being horribly unstable, so I'd start by looking elsewhere.
Reinstall the OS, then reinstall HW3Patch, then PreOS or KerNO (the latter is enough as a crash protection), PreOS is necessary only for "kernel-based" programs (which are a minority).
KerNO is definitely compatible with Titanium HW3, but I don't know about HW4 (what I have). Could it make a difference? I don't really know what the differences in hardware versions are.
Would it help if I ran Ghostbuster on everything on my Titanium?
Also, these weird errors only seem to happen when deleting an app that was preloaded. I tried sending TI's calculus tools app to my calculator (a non-preloaded TI app that I had downloaded and deleted a while ago). After I sent it, I deleted it and there were no problems. Deleting it also seemed to be much faster than deleting the other apps, even the Spanish Stats one, which was smaller.
Anyway, I just reinstalled the OS, HW3Patch, and KerNO, and I'll look into the compatibility status of various programs later when I have some free time.
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I think I've gotten to the bottom of this.
Well, not really. I still don't know what was causing it, but I found a solution. I did a full backup, then I installed PreOS rather than KerNO (for no real reason, I just wanted to see if it would work differently), and then I cleared Flash ROM, both apps and my archive (using the MEM menu), and then did a RAM clear (using the key combination).
As I expected, I got a little "Crash intercepted" message in the bottom of the screen from PreOS, but all the apps deleted themselves (except for Super Start because I forgot to disable it), and if my calc was left unstable the RAM clear solved that.
Now I'm only going to put back the flash apps I want... and if they were preloaded ones, I'm definitely not going to take them from my backups, I'm going to download them from TI's site. Since I was able to delete downloaded TI apps with no trouble, they should be perfectly deletable.
Then I'll look through the programs I want to put back on and make sure they're all compatible, and then I'll run Ghostbuster on them just to be absolutely certain.
I'd still like to know why my calc got screwed up, but unless I have any other weird behavior I'm going to assume things are okay for now.
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KerNO is definitely compatible with Titanium HW3, but I don't know about HW4 (what I have). Could it make a difference? I don't really know what the differences in hardware versions are.
No programmatic difference between HW3 and HW4.
Would it help if I ran Ghostbuster on everything on my Titanium?
Not likely: if you used programs that don't run on the 89T, you'd get well-known and well-visible problems (no grayscale in games, major trouble with compressed programs if you're using the specific launcher or large, multi-chunk programs). than not being able to delete some FlashApps.
SuperStart cures the woes of old specific launchers for compressed programs, and usually saves space because you can just throw these specific launchers away.
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Okay... I have two other questions, only partly relevant.
1. Is it possible to have both PreOS and KerNO installed at the same time? Or would I have to uninstall one before installing the other? KerNO says it can't be installed on top of a kernel, but could I install PreOS over KerNO?
2. Is it possible to permanently brick a 68k calc? Of course there's always hardware failure, and there is the possibility of Flash wearing out, but is there anything else?
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1.) I seem to remember some of these things not playing nicely with one another, I don't know if I would try it. Not sure what kind of problems it could potentially cause.
2.) I'm sure it is otherwise possible, but you'd have to be messing with some low level stuff.
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1. Is it possible to have both PreOS and KerNO installed at the same time?
No, they won't work together. I think that both detect the presence of other kernels, and bail out with an error message if they find one.
2. Is it possible to permanently brick a 68k calc?
Yes, it is. Wearing the Flash out is very unlikely, but TI-68k calcs can be bricked much in the same way as TI-Z80 calcs.
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Erasing the certificate then deleting the OS?
That said, BrandonW wrote an utility to unbrick a calc on which that happened, though. However, I don't remember if it was 100% reliable and I think it was only for the 83+/84+
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Yes, Brandon's utility is very likely to be only for 83+/84+.
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I actually just remembered the last stupid thing I did on my Titanium, and it was before all of this happened.
I was working on the token file for my project (I was working on it yesterday and that's how I remembered) and I wanted to rename it something like "8xtoks". Unfortunately, the VAR-LINK dialog doesn't let you move a file to something with a number at the front, so I decided to try using Andrew V's cmd (http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/426/42618.html) program (a DOS-style command line interface) that allows you to do things like move or rename archived files, or delete entire folders- things that the VAR-LINK dialog doesn't let you do.
When I tried, it screwed up my calculator... I don't remember exactly what happened but it was only solved with a combination of a RAM clear and resending the OS (not sure in which order). And after that everything seemed stable, until this...
Could this be related? Or is it still more likely that I ran some incompatible assembly program a while ago too?
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Deleting entire folders is possible through the VAR-Link dialog, just select the folder with F4 before deleting it :)
I don't know precisely what can have screwed up your calculator. There's no write protection (only a silly execution protection that complicates launching other programs), so pretty much any memory overrun in an assembly program can have immediate or delayed consequences on the system's stability.
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Deleting entire folders is possible through the VAR-Link dialog, just select the folder with F4 before deleting it :)
...oh. I didn't know that, thanks.
I don't know precisely what can have screwed up your calculator. There's no write protection (only a silly execution protection that complicates launching other programs), so pretty much any memory overrun in an assembly program can have immediate or delayed consequences on the system's stability.
Wait, what about the boot code? Is that protected, like it is on z80 calcs?
So, in order to make sure everything was stable again (if memory somewhere had been overwritten) what would I need to do? Do a "system hard boot" by removing a battery and using [ON] + [)] + [-] (a key combination which I found here on UTI (http://www.unitedti.org/forum/index.php?s=edb7a868186e84f05e0b9a1a33f1b20b&showtopic=7542) when I went hunting through various tech support forums)? Delete the OS before sending a new one?
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On TI-68k calcs, the boot code is permanently write-protected, and it's referenced by the OS only for installing an OS (i.e. it's not referenced for e.g. turning the calculator off or writing stuff to the Certificate memory).
To restart from a known clean system state, I'd reset everything (F1 -> 3 from the 2nd + MEM dialog, which erases and then resets the calculator), then I'd go to the boot code (hold APPS + ON when putting back a previously pulled battery), and transfer a fresh copy of the OS.
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I'm not sure if this would have any relation to the problem described in this thread, but I remember having some initial stability/lock-up problems with my TI-89 Titanium when I first bought it back around 2006–2007 or so, even before I even installed any of my own stuff on the calculator. Apparently, one or more of the preloaded flash apps must have been the culprit since these problems stopped as soon as I deleted most of them, and it never came back since (and I've used it regularly from that time all the way up to now).
I remember some crashes when deleting flash apps, but I think this was due to other factors which I don't remember clearly—maybe something like attempting to run TSRs without having the necessary patch installed or something.
As others said, if it doesn't act up anymore, it's probably nothing to worry about. Also, in my experience, it seems to be a good idea in general to only have loaded on the calculator what you actually plan to use (especially where things like flash apps and TSRs are concerned) to reduce the chances of weird conflicts and such problems.
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Interesting. I don't think I had stability problems before I started putting other stuff on my calculator, though. I remember after trying various programs I was having various weird problems that were solved by reinstalling the OS and patching it with the Hw3 Patch. Since then, I didn't have any trouble until now.
Well, anyway, I'm going to continue under the assumption that everything is fine, until it proves not to be, and then I'll take the reset steps suggested by Lionel.
And I'll also keep the calc clean of stuff I don't intend to use as well.