DATAMATH CALCULATOR MUSEUM |
Texas Instruments TI-30X IIS (Underwood Distributing Co.)
Date of introduction: | July 2023 | 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 |
||
Weight: | 3.3 ounces, 94 grams | Serial No: | |
Batteries: | Solar cells + CR2025 (60µA) | Date of manufacture: | mth 01 year 2023 (R) |
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
a few days after we published our annual Back-to-School 2023
update of the Datamath Calculator Museum with pictures of both an orange and a
lime-green TI-30X IIS. At first glance not too exciting, we still remember them
from the the Back-to-School 2011
campaign. Retailer Target
offered a lime-green TI-30X IIS while
Staples had the orange
TI-30X IIS on their shelves. But Jake sent
some pictures of both disassembled calculators and their sales boxes and we
noticed that they were not manufactured in 2011 but as recent as January 2023.
Thanks, Jake! Usually we use Texas Instruments "Retail Colors" webpage as
reference for our updates but they missed not only mentioning Target's white
TI-84 Plus but these two TI-30X
IIS, too.
Disassembling
the featured orange TI-30X IIS manufactured January 2023 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 two calculators with Date codes K-0304 and K-0409 yields no
significant differences.
Inspecting the PCB of this TI-30X IIS calculator brought our attention to two small marks reading
SR16N/N1-11 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, August 21, 2023. No reprints without written permission.