I am glad you got your calc to work again. This is probably the most dangerous TI-OS glitch ever. I didn't even knew the TI-84+ also had it. In my case, even resending the OS still failed, so I had to take the receipt and take my 83+SE back to the store.

Curious idiot that I am, of course, I immediately try it out.

Don't worry, this is the first thing I tried immediately when archived stuff showed up in my group menu on my SE. I was curious how funky the calc would act before RAM clearing.

I am the kind of person that have left my calc run on a Blue Screen/Lines Of Death (caused by bad ASM program) for over 3 minutes a few times


As for respect, Omnimaga has a system like Youtube comments rating. People can gives thumbs up or thumbs down to comments, but unlike Youtube, all these positive and negative votes are kept track of and added together, so you can see the total for everyone below their profile. Some french PHPBB forums like TI-BANK got this too, altough you can also know how much negative and positive votes someone received and given

Sometimes, when an ASM program crashes, the calculator will enter into something called test mode. Basically, the entire screen will turn blue (yes, colors) and the LCD will start leaking on each sides of the screen until you remove a battery for two seconds to trigger a reset. It is not recommended to leave the calc in a BSOD state for an extended period of time as it can damage the LCD.

On the regular 83+ calculator, instead of the entire screen turning blue, only a few horizontal blue lines, which can also eventually damage the LCD, will appear.

Calculator BSODs sound... interesting.... I've never messed around with ASM much (mostly Codex and some xlib) and you've convinced me to keep not messing around with ASM (and messing up my calculator).

Hmm, I don't want a bsod...  Is that the same mode as [mode] [alpha] [S ] ?  Or is it a compleatly different mode?

Insorak, I'm happy your calc works.

Edit: Silly strikethrough! I had to change it to [S ].

LCD test mode is obtained by sending the byte $1F (there are a few other valid ones, though) to the screen command port (10h). It causes an excessive amount of energy to be sent to the LCD, which makes the crystals turn blue. Not healthy...

Mode+Alpha+S is merely a self-test to check if everything works properly.

So now why in the world would that feature be included if it hurts the calculator Another one of TI's blunders?  Actualy has a good reason?  Or actually unintentional?  I never actually got to find out

That said, I think in generaly, if you don't let test mode running for too long, it shouldn't cause too much harm.

There's also something you can do with test mode that is triggered by changing the contrast from a high to very low value in an instant. It only works on the 83+SE, 84+ and 84+SE, though. When doing so, the calc seems to quickly flash to black (like, during 0.01 second or something) then display dissapears. To me, it seems like test mode is being triggered during a centisecond approximately, when this happens (kinda similar to when you turn off a TI-89, where blue lines shows up for 0.1 second before display dissapears). If you use xLIB to quickly change the contrast back and forth from low to high value through a loop, the entire screen will turn blue instead of a wave effect like on the 83+. However, it will not be as blue as in test mode, and liquid crystal will not leak outside the screen display limitations. Plus, it can be stopped by simply ending the loop or pressing ON. This can be sort of useful for special magic animations in certain games.

ah i see.  That raises my opinion of Ti from -23 back up to -22

LOL