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Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: critor on September 16, 2012, 07:14:54 am

Title: Difference between CX & CX CAS hardware spotted
Post by: critor on September 16, 2012, 07:14:54 am
In a previous TI-Planet news (http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10386#p129533), we figured out that there was a hardware difference between non-CAS TI-Nspire CX and TI-Nspire CX CAS.

Although both calculators are sharing the same screen board (which is the mainboard as it does include the ASIC and NAND chips but programmed differently), a FireBird_Color_MB_6422 we noticed that the keypad boards had different references:
(http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&image_id=1229) (http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image_page.php?image_id=1229)
(http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&image_id=1348) (http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image_page.php?image_id=1348)

We were wondering what the interest of maintaining a separate production line for non-CAS TI-Nspire CX could be, since unlike previous models both keyboards are now the same on TI-Nspire CX.



To better understand what TI had in mind, let's just plug a TI-Nspire CX CAS screen board in a non-CAS TI-Nspire CX:
(http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&image_id=1354) (http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image_page.php?image_id=1354)
The TI-Nspire CX CAS OS doesn't want to start and shows you an "unrecognized keypad" error message, confirming that there is some hardware difference between the non-CAS CX and CX CAS keypad boards.



Let's also plug a non-CAS TI-Nspire CX screen board in a TI-Nspire CX CAS:
(http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&image_id=1355) (http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image_page.php?image_id=1355)
This time no error message, but the OS does not boot and the calculator enters a reboot loop.



All this is weird...

We could think to a protection against 'case switching' but it's not much harder to swith keypad boards after switching screen boards.

It might be intended to counter temporary or permanent non-CAS to CAs modifications through OSlauncher or hwMod, although they've never been runned successfully on TI-Nspire CX.

Or perhaps simply that this has been kept for strange compatibility reasons with non-CX Nspire models which had different keyboards.



Source:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10390
Title: Re: Difference between CX & CX CAS hardware spotted
Post by: Jim Bauwens on September 16, 2012, 12:10:10 pm
Hmm, very interesting.

Also, if this would be against CAS on non CAS, it wouldn't be very effective, as someone would make a tool to patch the phoenix.raw since it's not encrypted.
Or TI was just not thinking that far.
Title: Re: Difference between CX & CX CAS hardware spotted
Post by: Sorunome on September 16, 2012, 06:10:33 pm
That is very interesting, maybe that is a thing they did to prevent using a cas os on a non-cas?
Title: Re: Difference between CX & CX CAS hardware spotted
Post by: Jim Bauwens on September 17, 2012, 03:16:54 am
Maybe, but as I wrote in my last post it wouldn't be very effective :D
Title: Re: Difference between CX & CX CAS hardware spotted
Post by: apcalc on September 19, 2012, 05:58:35 pm
Nice pics! I would be afraid to disassemble my calc like that! ;)
Title: Re: Difference between CX & CX CAS hardware spotted
Post by: NeoCrisis on September 21, 2012, 10:27:14 am
Well, you just need a Torcx 5/6 screwriver.. My Nspire strangely has 5/6 T6 screws and one T5 OO that surprised me a lot, but as I bought a set of T5/6/7, I don't mind :P
Title: Re: Difference between CX & CX CAS hardware spotted
Post by: runeazn on December 09, 2012, 12:16:19 pm
it also has a strange horuglass like screw?
Title: Re: Difference between CX & CX CAS hardware spotted
Post by: aeTIos on December 10, 2012, 03:28:53 am
*cough* you necroposted by 3 months *cough*