Author Topic: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+  (Read 7859 times)

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Offline critor

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1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« on: April 28, 2012, 08:20:23 pm »
If you hold Home+Enter+P on a TI-Nspire CAS+, you don't get a maintenance menu, no... the calculator just does immediatly remove the OS without prompting! :P

As this prototype based on the TI-Phoenix 1 is totally incompatible with later Nspire models, and as Texas Instruments has never published a CAS+ OS installation file, your calculator is now permanently bricked.

Without Texas Instruments help, we could rebuild a compatible OS installation file if we managed to dump the NAND ROM.

There were many attemps using the TI-Nspire Computer Link, and all of them failed... So if we have no further similar idea, we have to try something else.



Jimbauwens is trying the thing another way. Following the idea suggested by mikehill2003, he has just tried the 1st hard-dumping of the TI-Nspire CAS+ with OS 1.0.554 I sent him.

The idea is to connect the NAND ROM to an xD card reader, as unlike other cards, xD cards are just raw NAND ROMs without any controller or interface.



Soldering those tiny pins was very hard and he even had to use a microscope!



But unfortunately, the computer stubornly states that there is no media in the xD reader.



Please cheer him up, as we might never be so close to dumping the CAS+ again...



Bigger photo available from the TI-Planet news:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=9179
« Last Edit: April 28, 2012, 08:21:56 pm by critor »
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Offline jwalker

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #1 on: April 28, 2012, 09:39:49 pm »
wow, very nice
also what are all of the other conectors on the board for?
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Offline TheNlightenedOne

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #2 on: April 28, 2012, 10:24:51 pm »
A microscope. Wow.  O.O
That's amazing. Good effort.
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Offline Netham45

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #3 on: April 29, 2012, 02:17:45 am »
Try something like an Infectus (used for Xbox 360/PS3 NAND dumping)?
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Offline Jim Bauwens

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #4 on: April 29, 2012, 05:44:40 am »
Netham, infectus is not much diffetent than what we are trying. In the worst case I will need to desolder the chip, but I got the tools :)

@jwalker. One comnection is for the keyboard, and the other one is basically a dock connector in a different form.

Offline critor

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #5 on: April 29, 2012, 05:48:31 am »
wow, very nice
also what are all of the other conectors on the board for?

One of the connectors is for the keyboard.

The other one is for the TI-TestBoard.
This TestBoard includes a serial DB9 connector and is supposed to have some JTAG.

We published some photos by Adriweb on TI-Planet last summer, but were asked by TI to remove them.
some of you might have kept them somewhere.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2012, 08:46:03 am by critor »
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Offline AzNg0d1030

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #6 on: April 29, 2012, 11:50:25 am »
Omg, I feel sorry... That's one TI Nspire CAS+ gone...
You just lost the game.



Offline Jim Bauwens

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #7 on: April 29, 2012, 11:55:43 am »
It still works...

Offline critor

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #8 on: April 29, 2012, 11:55:58 am »
What are you talking about? It's still booting...
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Offline AzNg0d1030

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #9 on: April 29, 2012, 02:17:42 pm »
Ok lol. Well, more work to do to disconnect everything :P
You just lost the game.



Offline Nick

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #10 on: April 29, 2012, 02:21:53 pm »
Ok lol. Well, more work to do to disconnect everything :P

sometimes you have to lose something if you want to save many others :) and this is one nice example, in the worst case scenario this ones gone, but maybe the other ones could be saved...

Offline apcalc

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #11 on: April 29, 2012, 07:35:40 pm »
Wow, nice pics and good luck! :D


Offline mikehill2003

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #12 on: April 29, 2012, 09:17:55 pm »
Awesome, I'm glad somebody finally tried it!

Jim, how did you try to read the card? What error did windows give you?

Offline Jim Bauwens

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Re: 1st try of hard-dumping the CAS+
« Reply #13 on: April 30, 2012, 03:13:44 am »
I tried using multiple OS's. However, I realized that the reader is broken :/
(Well, it doesn't read working xD cards either)
So now I'm going to use a smartmedia reader :)