TI-83 series

The TI-83 Plus

The French version of the TI-83 Plus

The TI-83 Plus was designed in 1999 as an upgrade to the TI-83. The TI-83 Plus is one of TI's most popular calculators. It uses a Zilog Z80 microprocessor[3] running at 6 MHz, a 96×64 monochrome LCD screen, and 4 AAA batteries as well as backup CR1616 or CR1620 battery. A link port is also built into the calculator in the form of a 2.5 mm jack. The main improvement over the TI-83, however, is the addition of 512 KB of Flash ROM, which allows for operating system upgrades and applications to be installed. Most of the Flash memory is used by the operating system, with 160 KB available for user files and applications. Another development is the ability to install Flash Applications, which allows the user to add functionality to the calculator. Such applications have been made for math and science, text editing (both uppercase and lowercase letters), organizers and day planners, editing spread sheets, games, and many other uses.

Designed for use by high school and college students, though now used by middle school students in some public school systems, it contains all the features of a scientific calculator as well as function, parametric, polar, and sequential graphing capabilities; an environment for financial calculations; matrix operations; on-calculator programming; and more. Symbolic manipulation (differentiation, algebra) is not built into the TI-83 Plus. It can be programmed using a language called TI-BASIC, which is similar to the BASIC computer language. Programming may also be done in TI Assembly, made up of Z80 assembly and a collection of TI provided system calls. Assembly programs run much faster, but are more difficult to write. Thus, the writing of Assembly programs is often done on a computer.

TI-83 Plus Silver Edition

The TI-83 Plus Silver Edition was released in 2001. Its enhancements are 1.5 MB of flash memory, a dual-speed 6/15 MHz processor, 96 KB of additional RAM (but TI has yet to code support for the entire RAM into an OS), an improved link transfer hardware, a translucent silver case, and more applications preinstalled. This substantial Flash memory increase is significant. Whereas the TI-83+ can only hold a maximum of 10 apps (or more often less, dependent on size), the Silver Edition can hold up to 94 apps. It also includes a USB link cable in the box. It is almost completely compatible with the TI-83 Plus; the only problems that may arise are with programs (e.g. games) that may run too quickly on the Silver Edition or with some programs which have problems with the link hardware. The key layout is the same.

A second version of the TI-83 Plus Silver Edition exists, the ViewScreen (VSC) version. It is virtually identical, but has an additional port at the screen end of the rear of the unit, enabling displays on overhead projectors via a cable and panel. It looks similar to the standard TI-83 Plus, but has a silver-colored frame, identical to the standard Silver Edition, around the screen.

The TI-83 Plus Silver Edition is listed on the Texas Instruments website as "discontinued." In April 2004, the TI-83 Plus Silver Edition was replaced by the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition. They feature the same processor and the same amount of Flash memory, but the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition features a built-in USB port, clock, and changeable faceplates.

TI-BASIC is the built-in language for TI-83 series calculators, as well as many other TI graphing calculators. TI-BASIC is a non-structured programming language, meaning it is arranged sequentially, without the use of methods or organized blocks of code. Due to its simplicity and the ubiquity of TI calculators in school curricula, for many students it is their first experience with programming. Below is an example of a hello world program equivalent to the assembly language example.

:ClrHome
:Disp "Hello World!"

The TI-83 was the first calculator in the TI series to have built-in assembly language support. The TI-92, TI-85, and TI-82 were capable of running assembly language programs, but only after sending a specially constructed (hacked) memory backup. The support on the TI-83 could be accessed through a hidden feature of the calculator. Users would write their assembly (ASM) program on their computer, assemble it, and send it to their calculator as a program. The user would then execute the command "Send (9prgmXXX" (where XXX is the name of the program), and it would execute the program. Successors of the TI-83 replaced the Send() backdoor with a less-hidden Asm() command.

Z80 assembly language gives a programmer much more power over the calculator than the built-in language, TI-BASIC. On the downside, Z80 assembly is more difficult to learn than TI-BASIC. Z80 assembly language can be programmed on the computer and sent to the calculator via USB port, written by hand directly into the program editor (using the hexadecimal equivalents to the op-codes) or compiled using third party compiler programs. Programs written in assembly are much faster and more efficient than those using TI-BASIC, as it is the processor's native language, and does not have to be interpreted. An example program that displays "Hello World!" on the screen is given. Note that b_call() is not an instruction, but a macro (syntactic sugar) for calling an OS routine.

.nolist ; Standard header
#include "ti83plus.inc"
.list
.org userMem-2
.db t2ByteTok,tAsmCmp

Main:
 b_call(_ClrScrnFull) ; Clears the screen
 b_call(_HomeUp) ; Moves the cursor to the top-left corner of the screen
 ld hl,Hello ; Loads the address that points to "Hello World" into register hl (16-bit)
 b_call(_PutS) ; Displays "Hello World" on the screen
 ret ; Pops the last value pushed onto the stack into the program execution register
 ; May be used to end the program depending on what's on the stack

Hello: ; Gives the label an equate address in memory
.db "Hello World!",0 ; The hex values of "Hello World" are stored in program data

.end ; Marks the end of a file
.end ; Two .ends must be used because of a bug in the standard compiler