It turns out my 83 has an earlier ROM version than any I can find online.

ROM version "1.O1O"
Serial 01112072
Date code I-0496

I'll dump the ROM later today.
For the sake of both clarity and posterity, I'll repeat what I said in SAX earlier:

I have a TI-83, serial 02202611 I-0496A, with ROM version 1.O2OO (yes, they're not zeros, for whatever reason). The first two digits of the 8-digit serial number on a production calculator are usually the number of months since the start of production, starting at 01. Seeing 01 and 02 both produced within the I-0496 (April 1996) date code is a bit unusual. I would have expected a serial starting with 01 to have a I-0396 date code. Perhaps there was a slight hardware change? If anything, I would expect a socketed ROM chip that mine does not have, but such prototypes don't seem to have any serial number at all.

You mentioned you found a bug; can you tell us about it?
CVSoft wrote:
For the sake of both clarity and posterity, I'll repeat what I said in SAX earlier:

I have a TI-83, serial 02202611 I-0496A, with ROM version 1.O2OO (yes, they're not zeros, for whatever reason). The first two digits of the 8-digit serial number on a production calculator are usually the number of months since the start of production, starting at 01. Seeing 01 and 02 both produced within the I-0496 (April 1996) date code is a bit unusual. I would have expected a serial starting with 01 to have a I-0396 date code. Perhaps there was a slight hardware change? If anything, I would expect a socketed ROM chip that mine does not have, but such prototypes don't seem to have any serial number at all.

You mentioned you found a bug; can you tell us about it?


The bug was something with putting a junk token on the home screen by putting "→ into a Y-variable and converting it to a string, then recalling it. I'm trying to reproduce the glitch right now so I can give an exact instruction on how to do it.
Here's a photo of the PCB
thehmmmyhmmm wrote:
CVSoft wrote:
For the sake of both clarity and posterity, I'll repeat what I said in SAX earlier:

I have a TI-83, serial 02202611 I-0496A, with ROM version 1.O2OO (yes, they're not zeros, for whatever reason). The first two digits of the 8-digit serial number on a production calculator are usually the number of months since the start of production, starting at 01. Seeing 01 and 02 both produced within the I-0496 (April 1996) date code is a bit unusual. I would have expected a serial starting with 01 to have a I-0396 date code. Perhaps there was a slight hardware change? If anything, I would expect a socketed ROM chip that mine does not have, but such prototypes don't seem to have any serial number at all.

You mentioned you found a bug; can you tell us about it?


The bug was something with putting a junk token on the home screen by putting "→ into a Y-variable and converting it to a string, then recalling it. I'm trying to reproduce the glitch right now so I can give an exact instruction on how to do it.


Here's the bug:
- Type "→ into the home screen and press enter. Ignore the syntax error.
- Recall this entry into Y1 in the Y= menu.
- Make a program with this code in it:
:Equ>String(Y1,Str1
:DelVar Y1
:String>Equ(Ans,Y1
Run this program and select 2:Goto in the syntax error menu. You may need to run the program a few times or query Str1 to set it as Ans for the glitch to work. If you succeed, it should give you this:

Deleting everything except the junk token and then pressing enter will just return "Done" although I haven't found any effect on the calculator. Doing 2nd [Entry] in a program makes the loading thing come up for a while but I don't remember if it just stays like that until you pull a battery or if it does something extremely weird.
Happy to see that you made it to Cemetech!
Someone sent me the Reddit post earlier today and I'm quite excited about it. Only the very early TI-83s had an Atmel ROM chip. The early TI-83 boards resemble a 1995 TI-82 or TI-81 more than they did any other TI-83, but those used completely different ROM chips.



The TI-81s from that era also had essentially the same board design:



That Atmel AT27C020 OTP-EPROM which is on this calculator was also found in early TI-86s, and the 512k variant of that same chip was found on the ROM modules of early TI-92s.



Given the ROM version and date code, it's pretty safe to say this is an earlier revision than the earliest known to date. Looking at the pictures you provided (thank you for those by the way), I don't see any difference between this board and revision As, or event other pre-As for that matter (not really surprising since they were all made within a couple weeks of each other). My best guess as to why there is such a drastic difference between early and late TI-83s is that they were in the process of integrating the CPU into the ASIC and for some reason, went through the trouble of designing a board to accommodate what they already had (maybe to meet some deadlines?). I've noticed that for TI, designing ASICs like the Toshiba T6C79 that eventually made it into TI-83s takes a lot of time and is very expensive, so by the time these calculators were produced, I'm certain they were already knees deep in that process.

Regarding the bug, I'm not sure why it would do that. I've heard of that method to store quotes and the sto arrow to a string, but I've never heard of it not working. Then again, I think the Equ>String and String>Equ tokens were added right around that time, so its possible that its that specific rom version (1.010) that doesn't like it.
mr womp womp wrote:
Happy to see that you made it to Cemetech!
Someone sent me the Reddit post earlier today and I'm quite excited about it. Only the very early TI-83s had an Atmel ROM chip. The early TI-83 boards resemble a 1995 TI-82 or TI-81 more than they did any other TI-83, but those used completely different ROM chips.



The TI-81s from that era also had essentially the same board design:



That Atmel AT27C020 OTP-EPROM which is on this calculator was also found in early TI-86s, and the 512k variant of that same chip was found on the ROM modules of early TI-92s.



Given the ROM version and date code, it's pretty safe to say this is an earlier revision than the earliest known to date. Looking at the pictures you provided (thank you for those by the way), I don't see any difference between this board and revision As, or event other pre-As for that matter (not really surprising since they were all made within a couple weeks of each other). My best guess as to why there is such a drastic difference between early and late TI-83s is that they were in the process of integrating the CPU into the ASIC and for some reason, went through the trouble of designing a board to accommodate what they already had (maybe to meet some deadlines?). I've noticed that for TI, designing ASICs like the Toshiba T6C79 that eventually made it into TI-83s takes a lot of time and is very expensive, so by the time these calculators were produced, I'm certain they were already knees deep in that process.

Regarding the bug, I'm not sure why it would do that. I've heard of that method to store quotes and the sto arrow to a string, but I've never heard of it not working. Then again, I think the Equ>String and String>Equ tokens were added right around that time, so its possible that its that specific rom version (1.010) that doesn't like it.


A couple of us screwed around with some other calcs/rom versions and the Equ>String bug appears to be present in all of them, although it does look a lot more broken on 83s for some reason. It looks like TI programmed later OSes to display all invalid tokens as a single question mark.
my physics teacher has a ti-83 on the same ROM version as OP's. I'll post a picture of the self-test screen when we get back from this whole, *hmph*, covid-19 epidemic quarantine
Izder456 wrote:
my physics teacher has a ti-83 on the same ROM version as OP's. I'll post a picture of the self-test screen when we get back from this whole, *hmph*, covid-19 epidemic quarantine


Do you know where they got it from? I wanna figure out if these particular calculators only ended up in one general area or if they're more widespread. Mine most likely came from a student at Adams State University in Colorado but that sadly doesn't say too much because they could've come from elsewhere.
thehmmmyhmmm wrote:
Do you know where they got it from?


Idk, I just know it's got the slanted screen, like yours; and the same ROM version.

EDIT :
you probably didn't see the TI-SAX message, cus I don't know how to ping such a long username,
But I shot my teacher an email, hoping he'd respond. If he responds I'll attach a photo.
Izder456 wrote:
thehmmmyhmmm wrote:
Do you know where they got it from?


Idk, I just know it's got the slanted screen, like yours; and the same ROM version.

EDIT :
you probably didn't see the TI-SAX message, cus I don't know how to ping such a long username,
But I shot my teacher an email, hoping he'd respond. If he responds I'll attach a photo.


Thanks! If you can, get some pictures of the back too (serial number/date code, if I remember right the letter before the numbers is a factory ID)
thehmmmyhmmm wrote:

Thanks! If you can, get some pictures of the back too (serial number/date code, if I remember right the letter before the numbers is a factory ID)

Yep that's right. It's going to be 'I', since all TI-83s from that era were made by Inventec in Taiwan.
  
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