Texas Instruments TI-84 PLUS (Asia Pacific Region)

This TI-84 Plus with its unique baby blue housing was introduced in 2004 for the Asia Pacific market. Texas Instruments sells (as of September 22, 2009) the TI-84 Plus in these countries: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Phillipines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Comparing this TI-84 Plus manufactured in February 2009 (Revision Code L) with an early product assembled in 2004 reveals only few differences. The design sports still 3 chips on one printed circuit board (PCB):

• TI-REF84PLCR/TA1: Z80 microprocessor, RAM, USB-Port 
    and supporting logic
• Macronix MX29LV800: 1M Bytes Flash ROM
• Novatek NT7564H: Single-chip 64*120 pixel display driver

The picture on the right gives an enhanced view of the ASIC that clocks the Z80 microprocessor with 15 MHz and incorporates the RAM, USB-Port and logic. Learn more about the Hardware Architecture of TI’s Graphing Calculators. Please notice the smaller package of the new TI REF 84PLCR/TA1 ASIC compared with the previous TI REF 83PLUSB/TA2 or TI REF 84PLUSB/TA3 found in the TI-84 Plus family manufactured between 2004 and 2007.

Recently members of the Graphing Calculator Programming community under the lead of Xavier Andréani made a very interesting discovery:

• All TI-84 Plus / S.E. with the TA2 or TA3 ASIC have access to 128k Bytes RAM.
• All TI-84 Plus / S.E. with the TA1 ASIC have access to only 48k Bytes RAM using
    the same assembly commands.

Texas Instruments introduced in 1998 with the TI-73 the first graphing calculator based on Flash-ROM technology and most subsequent designs are based on this design. This TI-84 Plus manufactured in 2009 makes use of a Macronix MX29LV800 chip with a capacity of 1M Bytes compared with 512k Bytes of the original TI-73.

The driver circuit of the LC-Display was traditionally manufactured by Toshiba for Texas Instruments' graphing calculators. This TI-84 Plus manufactured in 2009 shows with the Novatek NT7564H a one-by-one replacement. It is just a bare chip mounted on a flexible piece of circuit board attached between the display and the main PCB.

While comparing this TI-84 Plus manufactured in 2009 with a TI-84 Plus Silver Edition from 2008 we noticed that Texas Instruments used for both calculators identical PCBs. The original designs of these calculators introduced in 2004 used PCBs with some minor differences:

The TI-84 Plus supports the ViewScreen panel and the TI-Presenter with an Presentation Link Adapter. A serial port of the calculators allows the connection to the Calculator-Based Laboratory system CBL, its successor CBL 2 and the Calculator-Based Ranger CBR. The added USB interface of the TI-84 Plus family calculators connects directly with the Calculator-Based Ranger CBR 2 introduced in 2004, too. With a new cradle even the optional full-sized QWERTY Keyboard introduced in 2002 matches with the TI-84 Plus series.

Don't miss the colorful slide cases developed for the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition, they fit on the TI-84 Plus, too.

Texas Instruments announced on March 1^st, 2010 the TI-84 Plus Operating System version 2.53MP with MathPrint™ mode for free download. The OS 2.53MP enables users to input and view math symbols and formulas, including stacked fractions, in their handhelds exactly as the equations appear in textbooks.

ROM-Versions:

2.43 (December 4, 2007)
2.53MP (February 15, 2010 includes MathPrint)
2.55MP (January 15, 2011)

You can check the ROM version of your TI-84 Plus using the following key sequence and reading the number on your screen:

[2nd] [MEM] [1]

Information provided by ticalc.org and Xavier Andréani.

Exam acceptance:

The TI-84 Plus is permitted (as of September 23, 2009) for use on SAT, ACT, PSAT and AP exams.

If you have additions to the above article please email: joerg@datamath.org.

© Joerg Woerner, September 23, 2009. No reprints without written permission.