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Flash Drives On a Calculator
aawm writes with the following news for graphing calculator fans. "As the result of a group effort between Michael Vincent, Brandon Wilson, and Dan Englender, msd8x v0.94 has been released, which allows you to use ordinary USB flash drives with a TI-84 Plus. With the appropriate cable, you can browse, modify, and copy (in both directions) files between a flash drive and the 84 Plus's RAM and/or archive."
Basically the best use for it is to expand the memory of the calculator by a good hundredfold. Of course, a hardware mod with putting the innards of a flash drive in the calculator and soldering the connections to the internal USB port would be even better.
In the UK any calculator capable of displaying stored text is automatically disallowed for GCSE and A-Level exams. Any calculator capable of storing programs on it has for wiped in front of a invigilator for the exam and anything that can do symbolic algebra is banned. Of course this requires that the people administering the exams know what they are doing. Unfortunately mine did so I wasn't allowed my Ti-89 anywhere near the exam hall - you could have fitted a fair amount of info in plain text on it 2.3Mb internal memory and it even has a basic e-book reader for it.
Get off my lawn! My TI-82 and TI-85 pwn you.
I'm too lazy to search for ot, but there were plans and code available for a flash drive via the TI-85 sync cable port (headphone jack) way back in the ZShell days.
You couldn't use the data live, it was more of a swap in and swap out type thing, but it worked.
Some details for those that are curious:
The TI-84 Plus calculator has a USB on-the-go port, meaning it can act as either device or host. Unfortunately the calculator's operating system has no provisions to allow it to connect, as host, to anything other than another calculator or a Vernier data collection thingie. The calculator has a mini-USB port, so a mini-A to A-female adapter cable is required to connect most devices.
I wrote a piece of software, usb8x, which configures and controls the calculator's USB port for use with other devices. It contains the low level USB host (think root hub) driver, and higher level drivers for: mice, keyboards, gamepads, EasyTemp (one of the vernier thingies mentioned above), Silverlink (a TI connection cable), and mass storage devices. The mass storage driver (and msd8x) was started by Michael and finished by Brandon.
The software this article mentions, msd8x, is a UI to access the mass storage driver. It contains a file browser so you can import/export files, and run programs from the drive. The raw read speed via usb8x from a flash drive seems to max out at about 130 KB/s. Reading data from the file system is a bit slower, maxing at about 80 KB/s. Writing data to a file is significantly slower, anywhere from 5 to 40 KB/s, depending on if the file needs to be grown (and on the sectors per cluster and the speed of the flash drive). I'd say the speeds aren't bad considering this is running on a 15 mhz Z80 processor.
Anyhow, I can't speak for Michael or Brandon, but I worked on the USB stuff because I found it to be fun. There are practical applications for those of us that use graphing calculators, but regardless, I don't think that's a requirement for a cool hack. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy it if you have a TI-84 Plus, and that we've provided some good fodder for the usual witty repartee otherwise.
-Dan Englender
True enough. It's been mentioned, but it requires some precision soldering due to the proximity of the pins within the calculator.
Responding to many posts above, TIs have had flash memory for years, just like the HPs. Like stated above, they do not have SD readers. What's great about this new creation is that it allows the calculator to communicate with an external flash drive, allowing for additional portable storage. Furthermore, the connection of a flash stick is made easy by the fact that TIs have integrated USB ports since about two years ago (Do the HPs have integrated USB ports? Maybe they do too, I'm not sure).