In a previous news, we discovered the launch of a new black TI-82 STATS in Germany for back to school 2012.

Let's have a quick look at the TI-82 STATS history:

• For back to school 2001 the latest TI-83 adopts a 'Parcus' case and is equipped with ROM 1.10001.

• For back to school 2004, you get the  blue TI-82 STATS. From both software and hardware points of view, it's a basic TI-83. The ROM is still the 1.10001. Presumably this name was chosen in order to keep a "TI-82" model, as they were quite popular.

• For back to school 2006, the blue TI-82 STATS disappears in France while still being available in other countries, and is replaced by a purple TI-82 Stats.fr. The latter has a keyboard in French and runs a new basic TI-83 ROM translated into french, the 1.11fr7. But from the hardware point of view, it's a TI-83 Plus motherboard, modified to run only basic 256KB TI-83 ROMs. Known hardware revisions vary from E to G.

• For back to school 2009, the purple TI-82 Stats.fr is replaced by a black TI-82 Stats.fr. It keeps the same ROM version 1.11fr7, and the same modified TI-83 Plus hardware revision G.

• For back to school 2009 again, you get in France the TI-76.fr. It comes with a basic french TI-83 ROM, 1.00fr5, which combines features from the TI-83 and the TI-73. It still uses the previous modified TI-83 Plus hardware.

Despite the similarities of the motherboards, it has never been possible up to date to turn a TI-82 Stats.fr or TI-76.fr into a TI-83 Plus, unlike what is possible with the Casio fx-9750Gii which can be turned into an fx-9860Gii.

The difference is that we've never been able to access any boot code on the TI-82 Stats.fr and TI-76.fr.

But after seeing this, a new TI-83 Plus.fr using TI-84 Plus hardware wouldn't be surprising...



So for back to school 2012, TI-Germany offers us a new black TI-82 STATS, and here is it allready for you!

It comes with 4 AAA batteries, the manual, the warranty card and the calculator link cable.

The serial number on the back shows us the hardware revision G. It can be assumed that it will be the same modified TI-83 Plus hardware as for the TI-82 Stats.fr and TI-76.fr, a hardware which then wouldn't have changed since 2009.

It's exactly the same 'Parcus case reused since 2001, and the color design is the same one as on the back TI-82 Stats.fr, except that the keys are of course in english this time.

The memory chip seems to be 32K, and there is no mention of archive memory. It would therefore still be a basic TI-83 ROM.



Let's check the last two assumptions by opening the beast:

The electronic circuit is organized around two chips:

• ASIC REF TI TI-738X, with processor and RAM, which is the chip powering the TI-83 Plus and TI-73, reused for the TI-82 Stats.fr and TI-76.fr
• 512KB Flash ROM chip EN29LV400AT-70TCP from cFeon, with the same capacity as the TI-83 Plus and TI-73

It is therefore exactly the same modified TI-83 Plus hardware than on the TI-82 Stats.fr and TI-76.fr.



Now to the ROM:

It is a basic TI-83 1.11 ROM, in english of course this time, a ROM version which was unknown to us until now, and we now understand a little better where the ROM 1.11fr7 from the TI-82 Stats.fr did come from.

Like other TI-82 STATS ROMs, it can be used on TI-z80 emulators in basic TI-83 mode.
On the real TI-82 STATS hardware, this ROM only allows you read-only access to the first 256KB of the 512KB Flash ROM chip.



It would seem odd for the TI-82 STATS to suddenly skip several years of development like this.

So, I think that the blue TI-82 STATS sold out of France from 2009 underwent exactly the same hardware / software modifications than the ones introduced by the TI-82 Stats.fr.
It just remained undiscovered until now because the TI-82 STATS is not available in all countries, and because it usually don't interest the TI community enthousiasts




Source:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11215&lang=en

These do not look like the same calculator. The screen on the originally advertised version fills up (larger) the front face much more than the actual calc. 

And what happened to the high contrast "black" LCD? The actual calc LCD appears to have the old blueish tone to it. 

I love the new color scheme though!!

Ranman I don't understand either. In 2000, the TI-83 switched back to the TI-82 blue LCD from 1993, even though it used the black one from 1996 to 1999. The blue ones are apparently much better for grayscale, though. It seems like maybe they're running through their entire stock of blue LCDs that is left before switching back or they're cheaper to produce and TI use them instead. As for the screen dimensions in the pic it's most likely to make it look larger so people buy it more.

Greyscale never looked good on my 84+ >.<
it was ALWAYS flickery, NO MATTER what.

ThePenguin's greyscale programs are awesome. He generally includes a delay adjust option so you can tune it to your calculator's update frequency.

You probably haven't done much greyscale outside of axe parser. It's much harder to get smooth greyscale in axe than in assembly.

So we can legally rebuild and sell it?

Oh, meh, that sucks, what use is my 3D-calc printer for then?

Isn't it 50 years or so? I think that in Canada, music, for example, enters public domain a few decades after the author's death