In a previous TI-Planet news, Adriweb published a software test of the Casio ClassPad II fx-CP400 sample he received from TSPromotion.

Today let's discover its hardware together.

The calculator is quite easy to open once you get the trick. After removing all 6 screws on the back (including 4 inside the battery compartement), the entire front plate (screen and keyboard included) must be detached from the case by forcing on one of the corners




And now, you get the ClassPad II fx-CP400 hardware:

The hardware consists of two distinct PCBs :

• the power supply board RJA527047-001V01 (LY777-E4W)
  
• the motherboard RJA527046-001V02 (LY777-1)

It seems that is the second version of the motherboard, but of the first version of the power supply board.
We can take that with two distinct boards, a future version powered by a rechargeable battery would be quite easy, and the system already supports it.



The motherboard seems to have a setup close to the ones found on most recent Casio graphic calculators USB (Casio fx-9750Gii/fx-9860Gii, Casio Prizm fx-CG10/20).

It's built around 3 integrated chipsets:

• at position U101, a processor chip on which we can't get more information for now, as it's been drowned in a solid epoxy drop (which is usual with Casio)
  
• at position U231, a huge SDRAM memory chip - M12L128168A from ESMT - 2Mbits x 16-bits x 4 banks, which results in a 2 MB RAM
• at position U221, a NAND Flash memory chip - S99 50338 from Spansion - however its datasheet is not public

About the RAM, the RAM chip was also 2MB on the Casio Prizm, but only 64KB were available for the user. And here in a similar way, we've only got 512 KB available for the user! >:(

About the NAND Flash ROM, if the informations found on the official website are accurate, the chip should have a capacity of 32MB, but only 5.5MB would remain available for the end user.



About the connectivity, a huge surprise awaits us. We've got:

• at positions HS401 et CN501, the connections to the power supply board
• at position CN401, the mini-Jack connector to transfer data between calcuators
• at position CN102, the mini-USB connector for a computer
• at position CN703, an unsoldered connector!

This CN703 connector with its pinout of 9 contacts and one lateral contact, and by its shape that gives an empty space on the board is clearly a connector for an SD memory card reader!
Unlike older Casio Classpad models, it is possible to add a SD card memory reader to the ClassPad II!




We're not sure if Casio has a future project for this since it would be a forbidden module by exam regulations of some countries (including France).
Traces of SD memory card reader support were already found on TI-Nspire and even on Casio Prizm fx-CG10/20 operating systems, although they were clearly missing from the hardware.
In fact, it seems those readers are used during hardware development where they give a way to reprogram or emulate easily the content of the ROM memory during tests - and so avoid permanently bricking the calculator prototypes with bad code: you just need to switch the SD card.

However, the community could clearly wonder if there wouldn't be some possibility for us to add a working SD card reader ourselves



Source:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12716&lang=en

And that's why we shall add it ourselves!

Just remember the few bricked Nspires due to connecting cables to the wrong pin in the port at the bottom of the calc.

I haven't heard of such thing...

That was Rhombicuboctahedron. And yeah I heard of that issue too. Maybe it was just a short or something ?

Some corrections:
SDRAM capacity is 16 MB

Thank you.


Then 512KB RAM usable among 16MB RAMis even more unacceptable.

What are your sources by the way?
For me, 2Mbits x 16-bits x 4banks = 2MB.

For me, 2Mbits x 16-bits x 4banks = 2MB.

Here's why I believe you are wrong about the "2Mbits" : The datasheet says "2M" and not 2 MBits.
Then, it's 2 mega (millions) * 16 bits (2 bytes) * 4 banks, which is, for me : 2 millions * 2 bytes, four times. Which is 4 MB, 4 times= 16 MB.

Your "2MBits x 16-bits" means that units-wise the result would be in bits²

So, yeah, it's neither MBytes nor MBits, just mega, for "million", hence the 16 MB as explained above.

That's what I believe at least and looks right with other similar chips with same info.


Anyway, I'm off to bed now

The LCD-controller of the CP400 seems to be some R61526- or R61581-clone. It identifies itself as R61523, when queried with command 0xBF.

Interesting ! How did you manage to do such a query ?

Datasheet: http://ti.tuwien.ac.at/cps/teaching/courses/networked-embedded-systems/materials/Renesas%20R61523_101_091225.pdf

Also, the fx-CP400 SH7305 processor runs at 116 MHz.