"beloved crystal" what would that mean? I have RC cars in mind,lol.
   So the calculators are 16 bit, I'm assuming that is necessary for more advanced calculations and memory sizes? I'm still studying the 8-bit principle    but I'm failing to understand what issues arise with reprogramming the flash memory. I've always been told that my flash drive will eventually go corrupt from use, but after the flash memory is reprogrammed, won't the remaining memory function as RAM with out any future corruption?  Can you partition the flash memory!?   Well, now I'm gonna have to find this bespoke "low memory" GB emulator, I am a little bit excited to play Links's Awakening. 

"beloved crystal" what would that mean? I have RC cars in mind,lol.

The crystal is a 32,768 Hz timer that can be utilized by assembly programmers. Internally, there are a whole bunch of scalers that let you access a very accurate frequencies with which you can do whatever you want. One of the best things about the timers though is that they will generate an interrupt when they expire, here are some things that the crystal timers have been used for.

• Stopwatches accurate to .01 seconds over several hours
• The sound in TI-Boy (newer versions at least)
• Steady FPS in games
• Determining CPU speed (~16.3Mhz on your calculator)
• Completely flickerless grayscale
• Playing sound with grayscale video

And without the crystal timers, none of this would be possible, or at least as accurate.

   So the calculators are 16 bit, I'm assuming that is necessary for more advanced calculations and memory sizes? I'm still studying the 8-bit principle  :P  but I'm failing to understand what issues arise with reprogramming the flash memory. I've always been told that my flash drive will eventually go corrupt from use, but after the flash memory is reprogrammed, won't the remaining memory function as RAM with out any future corruption?  Can you partition the flash memory!?   Well, now I'm gonna have to find this bespoke "low memory" GB emulator, I am a little bit excited to play Links's Awakening.  :)

Well, the flash memory actually is partitioned already. The problem is that it is partitioned in 64KB chunks which is a hardware requirement. Your flash drive probably is partitioned into 512 byte chunks which are easy to work with. And like I said, the reason it can't be effectively used as ram is because it is essentially a one time write.

A good way to look at flash would be to compare it to an etch-a-sketch. When you first start out, the entire thing is blank, then you draw you picture and you're happy with it. But lets say you make a mistake and you want to erase it, you can't. Instead, you have to shake the etch-a-sketch and clear the whole screen. This is exactly how the flash on the calculator works.

64KB chunks are huge in calculator land, 64KB is the maximum size the processor can even address, so erasing a sector of that size is not something to take lightly, especially because it takes 2 seconds. It's because of the way that flash works that we can't use is as ram. Using flash as ram isn't practical because once you write a value, it's there for good, and the only way to write another is to find some free space, which would be after your data. Then, you would just keep this up until you run out of space, at which point you have to format the entire thing and start over.