With the current games released so far, the only real way to really damage your calculator permanently is if one of the games frustrates you enough to take an hammer to smash your calc out of anger.

However, in case a game crashes, your RAM will most likely be cleared, along with some archive stuff in some cases. Always back up in case. Also some crashes can cause the screen to turn royal blue so in that case just remove a battery quickly and your screen should be safe.

There's nothing that would permanently crash your calc other than utilities that alter the boot code or certificates, but you'll never see those things in games ever. So you should be safe if you don't mind occasional RAM clears.

That's awesome, my ram clears all the time, I don't mind.  I eat that stuff up.
But something weird happened today where my screen turned black (not because of brightness) and battery removal didn't work, neither did del + insert battery.  It worked after a few battery removals though (it had me pretty damn nervous).  In this case would reinstall os work since I can't see the screen (and calc won't respond)?

I think it might have had something to do with the mode (clears screen, pauses game) key on mario 1.2

what about this game fftom 2, will it break my calc?  http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/272/27285.html

I don't know.  It says that if you press on damage to your calculator may occur.  It also puts a lot of emphasis on how the author is not responsible to damage to your calculator.  Read the readme.

Oh yeah, and what do you mean when you say my screen will go royal blue?  So it will just crash, turn royal blue, and I should pop out a battery really quick?  What happens if I fail to remove a battery in time?

Oh yeah, and what do you mean when you say my screen will go royal blue?

It's a pretty specific thing called the LCD test mode, and I don't know of any programs that cause it unintentionally. Usually when it happens, it's because someone tried to make it happen.

So it will just crash, turn royal blue, and I should pop out a battery really quick?

It's a command sent to the display to tell it to basically go overpowered. It's used for testing the LCD quality, but after a while it can do damage to the display. Pulling a battery will stop it immediately.

What happens if I fail to remove a battery in time?

If you let it run for a few minutes, it can leave lasting damage to your screen.

Again, I don't think it really happens unintentionally.

Quote from: robberguy189 on October 05, 2012, 08:52:41 pm

Oh yeah, and what do you mean when you say my screen will go royal blue?

It's a pretty specific thing called the LCD test mode, and I don't know of any programs that cause it unintentionally. Usually when it happens, it's because someone tried to make it happen.

Quote from: robberguy189 on October 05, 2012, 08:52:41 pm

So it will just crash, turn royal blue, and I should pop out a battery really quick?

It's a command sent to the display to tell it to basically go overpowered. It's used for testing the LCD quality, but after a while it can do damage to the display. Pulling a battery will stop it immediately.

Quote from: robberguy189 on October 05, 2012, 08:52:41 pm

What happens if I fail to remove a battery in time?

If you let it run for a few minutes, it can leave lasting damage to your screen.

Again, I don't think it really happens unintentionally.

mario 1.2 is, coincidentally, the only thing i've ever seen to cause it unintentionally, so that must have been what happened.

mario 1.2 is, coincidentally, the only thing i've ever seen to cause it unintentionally, so that must have been what happened.

* shmibs wonders how coding that accidentally worked.

Mario 1.2 is, coincidentally, the only thing i've seen to need ALCDFIX recently.

Here's what happens, Mario uses the old naive fastcopy, this means that on calcs with bad screens, it's going to be garbled unless you use ALCDFIX. Now, what usually happens when you send commands too fast is that the LCD driver just can't keep up and doesn't perform all of them which is what causes the garbling.

That's what usually happens. But on rare occasion, the LCD driver will instead perform the wrong command. This is rare since 31/32 writes to the screen simply data rather than commands, but it happens. So what can happen is that the LCD driver executes the wrong command, and that command happens to be test mode.