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Messages - Slaith

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Nspire I/O / Re: How can I do IO through the USB port 4 cx CAS?
« on: October 15, 2013, 10:06:26 pm »
True, although to clarify, once you buy a TI-Nspire CX, TI no longer owns it nor its hardware. They still hold the patents and copyrights, but after the calc gets out of the store, they can't dictate what you can do with it anymore, so it's obvious that the TI programming community will attempt to fight for that right. TI might have reasons to block the hardware, but we live in free countries for the most part (or countries where doing what we want with purchased hardware is allowed).

Lets suppose I write some code to bypass all the test mode security but make it look like it is in the test mode and even have access to other additional capabilities the teacher is unaware of and I post it out on the internet. What do you think would happen? It would be banned from all tests and less people would buy it and TI would lose money and go after me even if it was difficult to find me. That's their greatest fear. If we keep beating their security at every OS version they will eventually give up and stop producing the calc or calcs in general. Another concern is intellectual property in that they invested a great deal of money in developing some of the software and they don't want others to have access to it. What algorithm do they use for computing the ln(matrix)  and e^(matrix) for example? Not easy to do it well. Why didn't they include matrix root(matrix) since they already have exp,ln and matrix^-1? There are a billion questions like these but it all comes down to money. If we zero or reduce their profit enough then they have to invest the money elsewhere.

Also, the Internet can get pretty dangerous if people feel that a company goes too far (in some case it can cause damages to both the company and users). Look what happened when Sony tried to sue George Hotz for the PS3 jailbreaks: Anonymous retaliated by launching numerous attacks on Sony's servers, causing PSN to collapse and compromising millions of user accounts.

Sony did sue him and he did settle and He thought Anonymous was wrong for doing what they did. I don't think that it should be legal to sue him for what he did or others do!

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Nspire I/O / Re: How can I do IO through the USB port 4 cx CAS?
« on: October 14, 2013, 04:25:31 am »
Yeah the only things I can recommend if you want to stick with calculator programming (I hope you stick around here no matter what, though, since over here there are also people interested in non-calculator related material ;)) is maybe get a refund explaining it's the wrong calc and you needed the 89Titanium, HP Prime, etc, then instead buy an older TI-Nspire CX used on Ebay or at a pawn shop and make sure that it runs OS 3.1 or below. Or you can of course go with an alternate calc. The most open calculators are the Z80 and 68K series, then comes the FX-9860G/FX-cg10/20 series. The HP Prime is a bit cheaper and more powerful than the Nspire, but it cannot run ASM yet either.

TI has done everything to make sure that no hacking occurs on the TI-Nspire line. They're getting even worse than Apple now and they spend more time locking the platform down than fixing bugs.


The only alternative besides a boycott is that customers e-mail TI requesting the ability to downgrade back or be able to use Ndless again, but how many people will it take?

DJ Omnimaga,

Believe me I DO HEAR YOU! The problem is that its their hardware and patents etc so ideally we could spend a lot of time decrypting their algorithms or as we say in EW countermeasures and they will countermeasure our countermeasures etc ad infinitim until one of  goes bankrupt or...
BTW I go back to the 70's and I am very very familiar with UCPU technology and can easily use whatever CPU but my 10 year old son & daughter with a cx CAS????

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Nspire I/O / Re: How can I do IO through the USB port 4 cx CAS?
« on: October 14, 2013, 04:14:49 am »
TI has always been concerned more about locking the calculator down and making it less useful to users. They're only worsening over time.

Depending on what you want to control, embedded ARM-based boards such as the highly popular Raspberry Pi, the Cubieboard, the BeagleBone Black, and others, are all of:
* much more powerful;
* much more open;
* much easier;
* much cheaper;
than any calculator on the market. Even the newly released HP Prime.

Dear Lionel,

Thank you very much for your response but I am struggling to understand exactly what your point is?

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News / Re: New TI-Nspire OS 3.6 with extra lockdown
« on: October 14, 2013, 04:08:41 am »
Last night, new TI-Nspire 3.6 OS files were found on TI servers.

The complete version number is 3.6.0.543, and it was built on Sept. 11th, 2013.

The OS is available for :
  • TI-Nspire
  • TI-Nspire CAS
  • TI-Nspire CX
  • TI-Nspire CX CAS
Let’s notice that we couldn’t find any release for the chinese TI-Nspire CM, which already skipped OS 3.2.4. Are those models discontinued?

The TI-84+SE version for TI-Nspire calculators remains the same 2.56MP.

This OS sets the minimum installable version to itself (3.6.0.546) and thus forbids any possibility of going back to any prior version - which is actually counter-productive since several bugs were found in the recent releases that weren't there before, in versions that worked better….

The OS does include Boot2 3.2.4 for the TI-Nspire CX and Boot2 3.0.1 for the TI-Nspire ClickPad/TouchPad.

Let's note that there is a new quite evil protection. The OS installation files contain new ‘manifest' files with the signed list of all files included and their signatures ! As a result, it is impossible to make any changes to these files: they can not be deleted or replaced.

As a result, it becomes impossible to use our TNOC utility to remove the useless Boot2 in 99% of cases and furthermore harmful, as well as sample files.
This means in practice that if you install the OS 3.6, the available space on your TI-Nspire ClickPad / TouchPad, for example, will drop to 14.3 Mo, and the update to nLaunch-incompatible Boot2 is mandatory.

Remember that at the time of the OS 3.0, the update to the 3.0 boot2 could destroy your TI-Nspire ClickPad / TouchPad, and TNOC helped limiting damage and therefore the number of calculators exchange for Texas Instruments. Such an attack against the tool, ignoring the past, is not acceptable.

If you remove the Boot2 from the 3.6 OS file, the system will devilishly pretend to function normally at first. But after the first start, it will change the minimum installable version to 3.6.0.546 and will self-destruct, reporting a discrepency in the RS232 log visible here. You are now condemned to stay with an unusable calculator until you accept to install the original version of the file OS 3.6, now the only accepted version. :banghead:

The home screen directly indicates the availability of the CAS engine, allowing a quick check during exams that forbid it:


We can also notice the new designs of the main calculator application, graphs, spreadsheet and Vernier :



Changes on the Lua scripting side will be detailed later.


We therefore do not recommend installing the OS 3.6 if you've got a monochrome TI-Nspire, or a TI-Nspire CX still running a nice 3.2.3 release or earlier. We may find a software-way to use the 3.6 OS in a controlled manner from these versions. But if the OS 3.6 is installed the normal way, that is to say, with all its protections, it will remain uncontrollable and going back will be very difficult because it will require external hardware, or may actually be impossible in the current state of our knowledge.


Source: (and downloads...)
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13206&lang=en

With 33+ years of programming/hardware design experience  and 26+ years as a EE I am always astounded why you are all at all surprised. Don't you get it? It's all about money and power! It has nothing to do with capability! Just look at the SI unit system in America, VHS v beta, QWERTY v others , 8086 v 68000/Z8000 etc, etc etc!!! TI is simply acting out of fear, pure and simple for their investments. IMHO, TI has invested in a student/academic calculator and not a computational platform. If you (we) destroy their business model then they will/must fight us but if we align ourselves (please, please bear with me for a moment please) with at least their profit motives we can make this platform the most successful to have ever traversed the face of this planet. TI,as I recall, from the 70's goes WAY back to Jack Kilby and probably the first IC CALCULATOR!!!! If we deconflict our efforts with their survival profit model then we's all down on our sh__ w/o TI threatn' us.
Just ensure two domains exist , one TI profit model for students/tests and the other NONSTUDENTS/TESTS/ all others. We need to come to an agreement that some indicator/unbreakable method is a student/test version
*OR* ours AND NO ONE CAN FAKE the student/test version! I think its that simple IMHO!!!! That way its a win/win for us AND TI because they have the student/test profit and growth to STUDENT==> Professional/hobbiest/ whatever profit model which are clearly and completely different.

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Nspire I/O / Re: How can I do IO through the USB port 4 cx CAS?
« on: October 13, 2013, 05:02:57 am »
Well, this is not possible neither through Basic nor Lua.
In C(++), with Ndless, there might be some things you could find. Try to look at ndlessly and Hackspire.b

It seemed like a great machine but the more I learn about it the less I am liking it! I just wanted a simple way to use it to control things for my 10 year-old son. There should be a simple catalog command to send and receive data through the USB port! How much  
work would it be for gosh sakes TI???!!!!!

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Nspire I/O / How can I do IO through the USB port 4 cx CAS?
« on: October 12, 2013, 05:28:59 pm »
I have a cx CAS and I would like to know how I can do I/O through the USB port i.e. what commands do I use?

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