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TI-Nspire Hack Enables User Programming

Posted by Soulskill on from the done-and-done dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Texas Instruments' most recent, ARM-based series of graphing calculators, the TI-Nspire line, has long resisted users' efforts to run their own software. (Unlike other TI calculator models, which can be programmed either in BASIC, C, or assembly language, the Nspire only supports an extremely limited form of BASIC.) A bug in the Nspire's OS was recently discovered, however, which can be exploited to execute arbitrary machine code. Now the first version of a tool called Ndless has been released, enabling users, for the first time, to write and run their own C and assembly programs on the device. This opens up exciting new possibilities for these devices, which are extremely powerful compared to TI's other calculator offerings, but (thanks to the built-in software's limitations) have hitherto been largely ignored by the calculator programming community."

2 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. TI announced a new firmware release today by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It fixes some battery reporting issues and other minor bugs. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade.

  2. Game Boy Color Emulator by allynfolksjr · · Score: 5, Informative

    Seems the developers have had some projects stored away until Ndless was released:

    http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/426/42630.html

    From the program description: "gbc4nspire is a Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulator for the TI-Nspire and TI-Nspire CAS, written from scratch in ARM assembly"

    Pretty impressive, if you ask me.