TI removes access to assembly programs on the TI-83 Premium CE calculators

In the latest OS 5.5.1 version released May 20th for the TI-83 Premium CE & TI-83 Premium CE Edition Python, TI completely removed access to assembly programs. User Xavier on ticalc.org writes:

This slam shuts a golden age of over two decades (!) of native code being officially supported on at least one actively maintained TI graphing calculator model.

Thousands of programmers have published thousands of programs (and produced even more), many of these published programs can be found in the ticalc.org archives, because ticalc.org has been around since 1996, i.e. for the entire period of official native code availability, give or take a few months time 🙂

As far as we can tell, TI did not make this move out of the blue. The trigger was probably a teacher posting, on his popular video channel, a video about a long-fixed flaw in an earlier version TI’s implementation of PTT mode for the TI-eZ80 series. The fix is from 2018, the video was posted in 2020.

Shortly thereafter, we can imagine that TI had to give in to pressure from some people who regulate standardized tests (as a matter of fact, they, not end users, are the real customers TI needs to appease). Needless to say, removing user access to native code has extremely little to do with exam security…

In fact, looking at what happened time and again on other platforms, e.g. the Sony PS3, we can confidently predict that this move will worsen exam security. From now on, the French 83 Premium CE, and certainly the international 84+ CE versions thereof in the near future, are in the same situation as the Nspire platform: a cat & mouse game of jailbreaks, fixes, and newer jailbreaks.

Read more on the post.

 


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