TI Introduces the TI-84 Evo
Posted by Travis on 6 May 2026, 20:50 GMT

Since its reveal earlier this year, the TI-84 Evo has been the talk of the calculator hobbyist community. Positioned as the official successor to the venerable TI-84 Plus CE, the Evo (short for “Evolutionary”) marks a significant shift in Texas Instruments' hardware and software philosophy. While it retains the iconic layout teachers love, it introduces a revamped user interface and a hardware platform that has sparked both excitement and debate among calculator enthusiasts.

Hardware and Performance: Faster CPU, Intentional Throttling?

The TI-84 Evo is built around a new processor, a 156 MHz ARM Cortex, that TI claims is 3x faster than the one found in the TI-84 Plus CE. The device features roughly 149 KB of user-accessible RAM and about 3.5 MB of user-accessible Flash storage and a streamlined OS that takes advantage of the increased clock speeds for navigation and complex calculations. The display remains a 320x240 color screen, but the “bezel-less” software design provides a 50% larger graphing area by removing the traditional borders, allowing for a square aspect ratio that finally makes circles look like circles.

However, the community's performance benchmarks tell a more nuanced story. While the UI is snappier and “Points of Interest” (zeros, intersections) are calculated almost instantly during tracing, the actual drawing of graphs appears intentionally slowed down. Enthusiasts have noted that TI seems to have throttled the graphing speed to make the plotting process more “educational,” allowing students to follow the progression of the curve rather than seeing the final result appear instantly.

Software and Compatibility: The Great Reset

Perhaps the biggest bombshell for users is the lack of native backward compatibility. TI-BASIC programs written for the TI-84 Plus CE cannot be transferred directly to the Evo. This is due to a fundamental change in the OS architecture and how tokens are handled.

To bridge this gap, community veteran Adriweb has developed an online converter to translate older 84 Plus programs to the new Evo format.

Community Reaction: Highs and Lows

The general consensus from in-depth reviews on Cemetech and TI Planet is that the Evo is a “quality-of-life” powerhouse for students but a mixed bag for power users.

The Wins:

• The Dedicated Fraction Key: A single-press button for numerator/denominator templates.
• The Toggle Key: A new hardware button above [ENTER] that switches between exact (fractions/radicals) and approximate (decimal) answers.
• The Home Screen: A brand-new icon-based dashboard that makes Apps like Python, Finance, and Conics much easier to find.

The Disappointments:

• Locked Ecosystem: Like late-model CEs, the Evo has strict protections against third-party assembly and C programs, further cementing TI's move away from open hobbyist development.
• Graphing Speed: The “slow-motion” graphing has been a point of frustration for those used to the near-instant plotting of other calculators and software applications.

Getting Started on ticalc.org

The TI-84 Evo archives are now open. While the selection is currently small, we expect the library to grow as developers port their classic utilities and games to the new hardware and develop brand new projects.

Further reading

• Cemetech's TI-84 Evo technical deep-dive and discussion
• Extensive multi-part Evo review on TI Planet (see topics titled “Test/review TI-84 Evo-T”)

Passing of fellow french TI calculator community member Romain "roms" Liévin
Posted by Xavier on 16 February 2025, 18:12 GMT

Today, we're carrying the sad news of the passing of Romain "roms" Liévin. It was relayed by François "mmu_man" Revol.

In this TI graphing calculators community, Romain was especially an instrumental part of the Linux Programmers Group, which brought the community pieces of libre, portable software (usually working on Linux, BSDs, macOS and Windows) for communicating with and emulating the TI graphing calculators we've come to love: libticonv, libtifiles(2), libticables(2), libticalcs(2), and their better-known TILP (II), TIEmu and TilEm front-ends respectively. The ability to communicate with (almost) the entire lineup of TI graphing calculators through a single, unified API, in its second iteration, is unmatched.

In 2007, he visited TI EdTech in Dallas, picking up a variety of calculators and cables to aid in further development of the communication libraries. TI doesn't want to invest in porting their software to Linux and the BSDs, and does usually no longer provide documentation, but helps select persons with hardware donations. Even to this day, few members of the user community had such a level of interaction with persons on TI's payroll.

Professionally, Romain was teaching some aspects of computer science and physics, and had additionally undertaken a PhD.

I met him several times over the years, and picked up his set of calculators and cables in 2010, in order to carry forward the maintenance and evolution of the LPG stack, mostly working on the libraries. A nice and smart person, with a good long-term vision for the community. It showed in decisions such as requiring that some features remain optional in TIEmu; this enabled TIEmu to remain usable into the 2020s with minimal maintenance, so despite the slight additional complexity it brought, time has now shown that it was the right way forward.

mmu_man will keep the memories from him at the engineering school, where we were young and technology was cool and interesting. That's when he remembers him smiling.

Article written by Lionel Debroux with a tribute of François "mmu_man" Revol.

Newprog 2.0 and NPPTOC released - TI-68k
Posted by Xavier on 30 April 2021, 20:46 GMT

Newprog 1.0 by is a very powerful programming language released in 2010 for the TI-68k series. Its syntax is close to TI-68k Basic, but its functionality is closer to C and ASM: access to memory, sprites, timers, OS variables, etc. In addition, executing TI-Basic instructions directly is possible. Newprog programs can be edited and compiled directly on the calculator. Basically, it is similar feature-wise to Axe Parser for the monochrome TI-Z80 series, released in the same time frame; sadly, unlike Axe Parser, it seems to have come too late to trigger a significant revival of the corresponding community.

Recently, Newprog 2.0 was released on ticalc.org. It represents an evolution of version 1.0, with generally good backwards compatibility, and significant new functionality. The main upside of Newprog 2.0 is that it can be used in conjunction with NPPTOC, a new calculator-side program performing source-to-source translation between Newprog and C under some conditions, e.g. that all variables have a single type throughout their lifetime. Once translated, the programs can be compiled to assembly using GTC (calculator-side and computer-side) or GCC4TI (computer-side), creating faster, standalone native code binaries.

However, there's more! Thanks to NPPTOC, Newprog 2.0 adds support for libraries, which can be programmed either in Newprog or C(+ASM), then compiled into native code, and called from Newprog programs. This unleashes the full power of native code. Other improvements in Newprog 2.0 include a rewrite of the documentation, to fix errors and improve clarity, as well as new functions.
All in all, this looks to be a very solid new release... existing and new users of Newprog alike should love it!

Article written by Mael Bansard (author of Newprog) and Lionel Debroux.

More text-based adventures for the TI-eZ80 series
Posted by Xavier on 25 December 2020, 20:48 GMT

With access to native code programs restored almost four months ago, it's high time I resumed featuring programs for the TI-eZ80 series: TI-83 Premium CE / 84 Plus CE and Python variants thereof :)

Let's start with another couple of "text adventures" - text output and formatted text commands input - uploaded in 2019. The popularity of the genre has faded, but well-designed adventures are usually hours of fun, sometimes temporarily frustrating when there's a roadblock, for those who attempt to discover the adventures entirely by themselves, without using walkthroughs. Taking external notes and map drawings is advised in some games, especially to help re-playing them.

Open Adventure CE is a port Colossal Cave Adventure 2.5 by "DrDnar". The programming of the original Colossal Cave Adventure game started in 1975 (!); since then, a significant number of persons have contributed to various versions of it. As in many adventure games, the player is navigating a complex maze containing treasures and monsters, solving puzzles, while of course trying to avoid dying prematurely.

A first upload in our archives for its author, ZEMU by Nicholas Mosier brings Z-Machine emulation to the TI-eZ80 series. The Z-Machine is a lightweight 16-bit virtual machine running Z-Code, created in the late 1970s for executing text adventures on a huge variety of platforms, originally used by Infocom; over time, successive versions of the spec and machine have gained capabilities, and spawned several improved derivatives allowing e.g. native support for 32-bit integers, the making of larger files, or the addition of images and sound data, for more complex and realistic games. The availability of a Z-Machine means that among other games, you can play Zork on your TI-eZ80 calculator, and therefore be eaten by a grue plenty of times before you beat the game... don't worry, that's natural, that's the hallmark of Zork ;)

We wish you a merry Christmas, and a hopefully as good as possible end of the very peculiar year 2020, hoping that 2021 will be a better one...

Article written by Lionel Debroux.