Omnimaga

Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: critor on May 28, 2012, 07:58:18 am

Title: When TI mods its own calculators hardware
Post by: critor on May 28, 2012, 07:58:18 am

In a previous news (http://ourl.ca/16125), we discovered that the TI-Nspire Zevio Magnum ASIC was supporting an external Boot1 NOR chip, present in TI-Nspire Lab Cradles but missing in TI-Nspire TouchPads.

Meaning that it could be possible to mod the TI-Nspire TouchPad PCB and add an external Boot1 chip flashed with whatever we want! ;D(http://www.omnimaga.org/Themes/default/images/gpbp_arrow_up.gif)



Did you know that TI developers do sometimes hard-mod calculators the same way hackers would do? ::)

Just check -  thanks to Lionel Debroux, we just put our hands on a TI-73 VSC prototype:

(http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&album_id=108&image_id=1053) (http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&album_id=108&image_id=1054)

Nothing really special from the outside? Let's just open it:

(http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&album_id=108&image_id=1061) (http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image.php?album_id=108&image_id=1061)

For one time, it seems we've put our hands on a prototype coming directly from Texas Instruments development team, and not from teachers evaluating it - the proof being that hardware mod around the ASIC chip.

What were TI developpers trying to accomplish?... ???



More and bigger images available from the TI-Planet news:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9352

Title: Re: When TI mods its own calculators hardware
Post by: aeTIos on May 28, 2012, 01:07:45 pm

Humm sounds interesting ^^
How did you get your hands on that thing, and what does the hardware mod do?

Title: Re: When TI mods its own calculators hardware
Post by: Lionel Debroux on May 28, 2012, 01:15:56 pm

Quote

How did you get your hands on that thing,

I received it from Romain Liévin, some time after becoming the maintainer of libti*/gfm/tilp.

Quote

and what does the hardware mod do?

I have no idea.
I seldom open calculators (I now have 23 TI graphing calculators, but I have opened at most 3, as far as I can remember), I didn't know that this 73 had a hardware mod :)

Title: Re: When TI mods its own calculators hardware
Post by: Keoni29 on May 28, 2012, 02:38:50 pm

That's nice to have, but what does it mean for us?

Title: Re: When TI mods its own calculators hardware
Post by: critor on May 28, 2012, 03:29:16 pm

Quote from: Keoni29 on May 28, 2012, 02:38:50 pm

That's nice to have, but what does it mean for us?

Didn't you read the 1st sentence about hardware mods ?

It took the time, sometimes weeks, sometimes months... But most of my (apparently useless) discoveries led to great usefull tools/tutorials in the end :)


So I think it's a little too early for such a question ;)

Title: Re: When TI mods its own calculators hardware
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on May 28, 2012, 03:34:38 pm

The next thing we will know is that TI will release a proprietary ASM/C program for the TI-Nspire using their own Ndless-like tool, and it will disable PTT temporarily too. <_<

Title: Re: When TI mods its own calculators hardware
Post by: Juju on May 29, 2012, 12:19:08 am

Yup, prying open stuff sure is fun. Plus it leads to interesting discoveries.