that's pretty freaking awesome Brandon. nice work.

Yay, yet another stellar work from one of our best. I'm glad that you were able to straighten out all the kinks and that this is functional. :) Props to elfy for alerting me of this release, too.

Extremely impressive work, top stuff!

Now all we need is to paint the keys over. :D

I looked at the TI-73, and me thinks the keys are marked differently.

Can you verify if the keys are in the same location (with the same function)?

If not, did you remap the keys in software?

The 73 and 83+ keyboards are physically identical, but yes, the keys are mapped differently.

Chameleon does not translate the keys at all, so you'll have to press the MATH key if you really want to press ALPHA, and so on and so forth.

I know that kind of sucks, but honestly, who among us hasn't memorized the 83+ key layout?

A Flash application installing a keyhook could of course remap the keys, but they're so drastically different that I don't think it would be worth it (which is why I thought about it and then didn't do it a long time ago).

Ok -- understood.

This is important for me to understand because I was interested in upgrading a Ti-73 for my middle-school daughter. I don't think that would work for her.

BTW -- there's someone on eBay selling refurbished TI-73's for $25 (including shipping). Might be a good option for someone using Chameleon.

Great stuff as always from Brandon. I have seen this in Brandon Wilson website some time ago but I ignored because I don't own a 73... But the name was strange for calculator stuff.

This has appeared as news in another calc site. But only recently I saw submitted to ticalc. Now people can find it more easily.

Well, it's certainly not a bird...
In any case, great job Brandon! It doesn't affect me, but that sounds impressive!

Cool I didn't even know there was a difference bettwen the 73 and 83. ;o

Nice, I wonder if the TI-73 has the same amount of RAM than a TI-73. I know it has slightly higher user RAM but maybe it changes when patching the OS?

"User RAM" means the amount of memory that is available for user programs and variables and stuff. It is the amount of RAM present in the calculator, minus the amount that is reserved for the operating system's use. The RAM chips of both the TI-83+ and the TI-73 can store exactly 32768 bytes. The TI-83+ OS, however, uses slightly more RAM than the TI-73 OS does. Therefore there is less user memory available when running the TI-83+ OS than when running the TI-73 OS.

The hardware differences between the two models are very slight (which is why this modification is possible to begin with.)

Nice work. To bad i have a ti89, and now a laptop (so i can run mathematica and doom3), but i'm sure someone out there is happy about this :P

You know, since the hardware is identical, I always thought it would be possible to turn a TI73 into a TI83+ given the right firmware patch, and it looks like it really happened now!

Great job!

But the thing is that used TI83+s are much more plentiful and cheap than TI73s. I wonder if someone crazy would make a program to go the other way :)

actually, this would be very useful for schools

if they would do it

Out of curiosity, does this also extend the Archive amount to fill the entire flash ROM instead of the lower limit TI enforces on the TI83+?

If you mean "Does it give you all ten Flash pages shared with the archive and Flash applications that the 83+ provides instead of the eight Flash pages with no archive and only Flash applications that the 73 provides?", then the answer is yes.

It is for all intents and purposes an 83+. The only practical differences is that bit 1 of port 2 is permanently low, there are no RAM execution (0C000h) permissions, the Flash execution permissions are broken (they're disabled on the 73 anyway), and the boot code is internally slightly different, but if you're not swapping it in directly and messing with it, that's not going to be a problem.

Will you tell us how you did this???

A lot of caffeine and research. :)

I took the 83+ ROM from the flash debugger and laid it over the 73 one, then stepped through it one thing at a time until I found things that were preventing it from booting. Then once I got it to boot, I threw it in a 73U file and sent it to a real TI-73.

Once I knew the significant things that made it not "just work", I started working on a system of dynamically applying those patches to any 83+ 8XU or ROM and a method of embedding replacements to boot code routines.

That was kind of a mess, but once I got it working, I started working through the smaller issues, like which boot code routines were causing odd things like defragment hangs, incorrect free memory being displayed, and so on.

The readme has details on what exactly is different between a 73 and 83+ if you're curious.

Pi!

I just had to do it.
Now where's Michael?

Wrong article

Huh, I definately typed a pi in that subject line, not a ð.

And in the text field, it appears as &#240, strange.

The correct article wasn't there when I posted. :-P