Following the previous news, Adriweb on TI-Planet has managed to get more details from Texas Instruments about the upcoming TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition model, which might answer some of our questions. Here is what TI wrote:

TI has begun previewing the soon to be released TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition graphing calculator. This product will be available in the Spring of 2013. The TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition has all the functionality of the best-selling TI-84 Plus family of graphing calculators - now with color and TI Rechargeable Battery.

In addition to that, as he mentions here and here, Adriweb got confirmed that the calculator will feature a Z80 processor of the same family as the older TI-84 Plus series and that it will have compatibility with the older models.


So basically, here is what has been confirmed so far:
-Model name(TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition)
-Release date (Spring 2013)
-Z80 processor (same family as previous calcs, so most likely no eZ80)
-320x240 color, backlit display
-Native ASM support (there are Asm(), AsmComp() and AsmPrgm commands and an APPS key)
-Same rechargeable battery as the TI-Nspire CX
-At least some compatibility with the older 84+ models

More anwsers to the following questions should hopefully come soon, either from TI or from 0rac343
-How far will 84+ compatibility will go? Will old ASM programs run? Will Pxl-On/Off/Change() coordinates, 8xi files and other TI-BASIC graphics become messed up due to the different screen resolution?
-What is the processor speed? There is wide speculation about Z80 processors not being able to go beyond 25 MHz.
-How much RAM and Flash/archive memory is available for the user?
-How long will the battery last?
-Is there an I/O port or just USB?
-Can it run Crysis?
-Price

Hopefully more info should be available in the near future.

Source: http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=10736

First post!
I lost the game and I think this is awesome.

On ticalc.org, I remember that back in 2002-06 or so, staff deleted every post that included "First post" in them, even if the post included content that is relevant to the news or great info, because every new had someone post that.

-What is the processor speed? There is wide speculation about Z80 processors not being able to go beyond 25 MHz.

According to Wikipedia, the eZ80 can go up to 50 MHz and is fully compatible. Maybe this /the/ one that's in there.

Nope, because TI apparently said that it was the exact same Z80 processor as the one present in the TI-84+ models.

Something I wonder, though, is why didn't 82 and 83 ASM programs run on the 83+ or why 82 ASM programs didn't run on the 83/82 Stats? Didn't they use the same Z80 processor?

(Btw for the newer members here, MirageOS used to have a built-in TI-82 ASM emulator, but I don't recall anyone ever saying that he managed to get any program to run)

They do use the same CPU, but the I/O ports work differently, and the RAM and ROM layout is different.  Very simple assembly programs can be made to work on more than one model, and in theory shells could have been written to make this easier, but in general it's just simpler to build separate 82/83/83+ versions of the same program than to try to make one program work on both.

I wonder why they use the same damn cpu. The thing is too damn slow for proper graph plotting.

I wonder why they use the same damn cpu. The thing is too damn slow for proper graph plotting.

Actually, the Z80 is sufficiently fast enough. TI's code is just really, really inefficient. You could write quite a fast grapher using BBC BASIC.