DATAMATH CALCULATOR MUSEUM
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DATAMATH CALCULATOR MUSEUM |
Texas Instruments TI-30X IIS (Target Blue 2024)
| Date of introduction: | November 2024 | Display technology: | LCD |
| New price: | $19.95 | Display size: | 11 characters and 10 + 2 |
| Size: | 6.1" x 3.2" x 0.6" 154 x 83 x 15 mm³ |
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| Weight: | 3.3 ounces, 94 grams | Serial No: | |
| Batteries: | Solar cells + CR2025 (60µA) | Date of manufacture: | mth 05 year 2024 (V) |
| AC-Adapter: | Origin of manufacture: | Philippines (L) | |
| Precision: | 13 | Integrated circuits: | |
| Memories: | 5 | ||
| Program steps: | Courtesy of: | Joerg Woerner |
Jake Smarkusky, Managing Director of
Underwood Distributing Co.,
surprised us in November 2024 with pictures of new designs for the
Dark
Navy, Pink and Target Blue
TI-30X IIS calculators. According to Underwood
Distributing'sTI-30X IIS calculators. According to Underwood
Distributing's
Calculator Blog, started the transition from the original design to the
revised design quietly in the last quarter of 2024 and we observed the new
products hitting the shelves around December. A big "Thank You" to Jake for not
only sending us some pictures of the new calculators but even providing the
Datamath Calculator Museum with boxed and unboxed loaners to research if Texas Instruments did just introduce some
cosmetic changes, redesigned the calculator internals or even switched the
contract manufacturers of the TI-30X IIS.
Disassembling
the featured Target Blue TI-30X IIS manufactured May 2024 by Kinpo Electronics, Inc. in the
Philippines reveals a well known internal
construction centered around an unknown single-chip calculator circuit and
powered by four small solar cells and a CR2025 backup battery. We discovered already in 2004 with Inventec
Shanghai, Kinpo Electronics,
Inc. and Nam
Tai Electronics, Inc. three different contract manufacturers for the TI-30X
IIS. Comparing this TI-30X IIS calculator with Date code
L-0524V with a TI-30X IIS with Date code
L-0123R (Kinpo, January 2023) and a TI-30X IIS
with Date code L-0420Q (Kinpo, April 2020) yields no
significant differences, just a slightly different placement of some electronic
components like resistors and capacitors.
Inspecting the
PCBs of this TI-30X IIS calculator brought our attention to two small marks reading
SR16N/N1-12 and SR16/SR16B-23, we noticed similar marks already with other
Slide Rule calculators manufactured by Kinpo
Electronics and started compiling a list of the
PCB-Marks on calculators
manufactured by OEMs for Texas Instruments.
If you have additions to the above article please email: joerg@datamath.org.
© Joerg Woerner, February 15, 2025. No reprints without written permission.