Kerm, I don't know what kind of NDA you've signed, but when the information under embargo leaks publicly the embargo dies at the same time.
At least, that's what's written in my NDA.

One of my TI contacts just got back to me that it's ok to post this now.

So you contacted TI imediately about Adriweb's news?
Whare were you trying to achieve?...

Like it happened with the TI-73 Explorer, TI will have to design a new PCB in order to move the mini-Jack I/O port from the bottom to the top.

So indeed, they can switch the RAM/ROM chips by the same time.

In a previous news, after discovering a different boot screen on our TI-Nspire Color (TI-Nspire CX prototype), we started to study the format and announced you the coming possibility to customize your TI-Nspire CX / CM boot screen.
Nothing complicated, because unlike the TI-Nspire ClickPad / TouchPad, the graphic elements of the boot screen are not stored inside the protected Boot1/Boot2, but directly in the first 128KB of the Flash-NAND memory, and can be reprogrammed with nsNandMgr.

But although using the same format, above boot screens are not interchangeable. Yes... the image data is signed with the RSA keys, which are different for prototypes and production models. So it is impossible to change the contents of the image data.

But ... Just before this data area is the description of the different elements to display on the boot screen, and it turns out that this description is not signed!

Each element is a rectangle described by in order:

• a vertical offset on the screen
• an horizontal offset on the screen
• the width
• the height
• an offset in the signed image data

It is therefore possible to:

• change the position of an element
• deform a horizontal element by playing 'slightly' with its width
• truncate the bottom of an element by reducing its height
• truncate the top of an element by increasing its data offset
• 'reverse' the colors of an element - as colors are coded on 2 bytes (16-bit R5G5B5), we just have to specify an odd data offset instead of even

The boot screen of the TI-Nspire CX / CM consists of:

• 5 error icons
• a full progress bar
• an empty progress bar
• a background

That makes 8 elements, but only two of them are permanently displayed:

• the empty progress bar
• the background

It would be possible to customize the boot screen by breaking these two elements, which would give two rectangles whose content would be derived from the signed image data. For sufficiently small rectangles, you could therefore have black, yellow, red, blue and gray colors, by pointing the appropriate zones of the signed image data, and you could also get their inverse colors in R5G6B5 which would make 10-12 colors!:)

But great surprise, there are actually 12 elements supported by the boot screen format!
The last 4 elements are simply unused on the current TI-Nspire CX / CM current and as a bonus, when filled they are permently displayed items!

Without having to break the two official permanent elements mentioned above, we can use ​​4 rectangles to customize our screen!

Do you want to remove the brand and model names?

Look, I have a new Nspire, the TI-Nspire CX+!

And now, here is a speedy background for overclocked TI-Nspire:

Excale even offers you a home!

And let my present you 'Booty', my new TI-Nspire CX starting companion:


Unimpressive are you going to say?

But there is another application, which is the digital signature of your TI-Nspire. With the positions, sizes and colors, there are many combinations! It is therefore possible to affix a small discreet and unique symbol on your boot screen, permanently identifying and protecting your TI-Nspire CX/CM against theft.

Indeed, this signature can not be removed by any official reset menu!

The only way to destroy it is to reprogram the first 128KB Flash-NAND again, which is not the scope of your average thief, and will be even less when Ndless soon finds itself blocked by the next TI-Nspire OS



Source: (with the format)
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11194&lang=en

Credits to Elementcoder for the translation of the news.

For those who understand french, here is the news about custom TI-Nspire CX/CM Boot screens:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=11194

Omnimaga does deserve to be the first site to announce this huge achievement to the international TI community, but I currently have no time to adapt this news in english.

Maybe somebody coule make a 1st short translation and I could edit/complete later?

and nice, does that mean it is fully customiseable now?

It depends what you mean by 'fully customiseable'.
We've got no 'real' editor and haven't figured out the whole format yet.

But everything shown here in this thread can be done and has been done!

Does it work on the Ti-Nspire Clickpad (Grayscale model)?

I haven't tried but I'm pretty sure it won't as the 'manuf' NAND zone is 16KB instead of 128KB.
But if you have a ClickPad hardware revision A or older, you can customize the Boot screen by reflashing the Boot1.
See my news about "Freely Boot1 1.1.9999".

GIMME DA PROGRAM NAO!

Just download nsNandMgr.
Dump your manuf zone, hex-edit it on your computer, test it under Goplat's emulator and flash it!

So does this mean we can insert graphics at that screen?
Could I make my screen this, for example?

Unfortunately that's impossible for now, and it might remain impossible for some reasons I'll explain later if confirmed.


But you can still digitally and permanently sign your TI-Nspire Boot screen with a custom 'small' modification.
The only way to restore the original Boot screen is to (re)Ndless your calculator and flash a backup with nsNandMgr.
Without Ndless, it's impossible to remove - a nice protection against theft, isn't it ?

Here's a photo from me (no trick with the image, and no use of mViewer):


Now try to guess what the news could be!

The TI-82 Stats.fr & TI-76.fr Flash ROMs have a grounded pin which physically limits you to the first 256KB , preventing you from accessing the whole 512KB Flash.


But even after modifying that, no Boot Code menu can be triggered with DEL+ON.
So we couldn't find a way to reflash the OS (the basic TI-83 OS is not designed to receive any OS).

And as the ROM only includes a basic TI-83 OS, you can't address more than 256KB in assembly, and there is no instruction/port to rewrite a Flash page.


The difference with the Casio Graph 35+USB / fx-9750Gii is that we were able to trigger the Boot Code install OS menu.

Do you know the TI-82 Stats?

In several countries it's been the TI graphing calculators 1st price since 2004.
The TI-82 Stats is just a basic TI-83. It includes the latest TI-83 Parcus hardware from 2001 and runs the latest 1.10001 basic TI-83 ROM.
It's probably been named this way in order to avoid confusion with the new TI-83+ in those countries.



In France in 2006, the TI-82 Stats was replaced with the TI-82 Stats.fr.
But the hardware was completely different: it wasn't a basic TI-83 hardware anymore, but a TI-83+ hardware, slightly modified in order to run basic TI-83 ROMs.
The included 1.11fr7 ROM had been translated to french.

In 2009, the TI-82 Stats.fr was redesigned in black but kept the same ROM and hardware.



In Germany, since back to school 2012, we've now got a new TI-82 Stats redesigned in black too:

We're wondering if it's still based on the basic TI-83 hardware, of if they moved to the modified TI-83+ hardware from the TI-82 Stats.fr, and if they've used a new ROM version or not.
But of course, the specifications are the sames as the basic TI-83.



Source:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11166&lang=en