Here's a challenge for ya'll. How about making an on-calc emulator (APP) that can run programs off of your calculator, but run them on a virtual copy of the OS. If it detects any bad activity, it aborts, telling the user exactly what routine caused it to defect.

Uhh... why?

so when your doing an asm program and it has defects, instead of wiping your calc's ram, it'll just report an error to the app.

That may be a bit difficult, not to mention you couldn't let the programs use the archive, and dealing w/the manipulation of RAM variable/programs/appvars would be rather difficult.
Interesting challenge, though.

Not to mention, you'd need to allocate an ungodly amount of memory to the emulator in order to try to be as exact in the OS's response as possible.

Yeah, I mean, one can write a full 83+ emulator for the 83+SE/84+/84+SE, but, like any emulator of its type, it'll be very slow.
Not to mention this is a rather ugly solution. (Though rather awesome if you can get it to work)

emu8x? That does almost the same thing, but it crashes if the code its executing is bad

It shouldn't crash per se, doesn't the emulator just return an error and force you to restart it?
Emu8x, though, can only get as close as the 83, which has slightly different hardware.
One can write a full 83+ emulator, it'll just be ugly and the flash portion full of epic h4x.

I'm confused...
I thought emu8x could do any z80 rom it was given, only some of them don't work. I could've sworn it would work with the 83+ rom

Nope, it does 82, 83, 85, and 86. (Also apparently 81, but I don't have a ROM and have heard the support is far form perfect)
Basically, it supports the z80-based calcs w/o flash rom

ohh, so that's why those calcs in specific were in the working list. I always wondered that. Thanks for clarifying

This sounds cool, but this sounds almost exactly like your Antivirus/Antimalware idea reworked in a different form. Do you have an issue either with really bad ASM programming or with people putting malicious programs on your calculator?

I have a problem with both.

Time would be much better spent restricting the ability to run (select) programs or Flash applications, or accessing certain menus or resetting the calculator.

I wrote something a long time ago called KLogger that would log every keypress and program/application execution to an AppVar, as well as whether it was explicitly disabled or the user managed to kill it through some other means.

I wrote something else as well (maybe it was in KLogger too, can't remember) that would prevent running programs or Flash applications, or any of the reset key combinations. The intention was to prevent people remote controlling my calculator from running malicious programs or resetting it. (I had a web page eons ago that would connect to a program running on my local PC that would forward keypresses to the calculator in the form of silent link packets and echo back a screenshot, so you could screw with it remotely.)

ok... this is a good idea...
but who is ganna work on it?

since it sounds like a real challenge...
a better solution would probably be making a more realistic/authentic TI calc emulator thats almost identical to the real hardware on the PC or something...

but i dont know how that would work, or how the current TI emulator on the PC is doing it's job, so dont pin me on this if i am wrong

I think BrandonW is the best person to write the things he was talking about, and perhaps ACagliano's original idea is best implemented by someone in the future who has BrandonW's expertise and plus an inclination to work on this project despite the significant obstacles.