TI-Nspire CX CR4 (hardware revision W+) infos

critor

Some little topic on the new TI-Nspire CX CR4 hardware.
(hardware revision W+ manufactured since November 2015)

New screen, with a new buffer geometry.
The new buffer is 90° rotated making it 240x320 instead of 320x240, and mirrored.
To give you an idea, if you run on a CR4 some code which does not support the new screen it looks like this :

Therefore, TI just completely broke the compatibility with all existing Ndless programs - diabolically brilliant. :P
So either we will have to rebuild all existing Ndless programs, most authors having moved on, and for some of which the source code is not available...
Either a future CR4 Ndless could have some kind of a compatibility layer...
But even in the latter case, it would imply writing the screen buffer two times (normal writing of the original program + fix writing), and so it would have a high performance cost for programs constantly refreshing the screen (nDoom, nQuake, emulators...)- we can expect a halving of the fps if there is no CR4 update.

As a result, natural antidowngrade protection: OS / Boot2 / Diags versions 4.0.0 and earlier will not work properly.
Versions 4.0.1 or newer are mandatory.

The CR4 therefore obviously comes with a new Diags, the CR CX IV DVT (2015/06/08) Diag in Version 4.0.1.45 built on August 18 , 2015.


New boot1 as already stated, version 4.0.1.43 built on July 20, 2015.
Here the bootlog:

1. Boot Loader Stage 1 (4.0.1.43)Build: 2015/7/20, 14:47:25
   
2. Copyright (c) 2006-2015 Texas Instruments Incorporated
   
3. Using production keys
   
4. 
   
5. Last boot progress: 0
   
6. 
   
7. Available system memory: 28072
   
8. Checking for NAND: NAND Flash ID: Generic 1 GBit (0xA1)
   
9. SDRAM size: 64 MB
   
10. Wakeup Event: ON.
    
11. SDRAM memory test:   Pass
    
12. Clearing SDRAM...Done.
    
13. Clocks:  CPU = 156MHz   AHB = 78MHz   APB = 39MHz   
    
14. Clearing SDRAM...Done.
    
15. Boot option: Normal
    
16. 
    
17. Loading from BOOT2 partition...
    
18. 
    
19. 100%
    
20. 
    
21. BOOT1: loading complete (168 ticks), launching <BOOT2> image.

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Boot1 has a new boot combo : [doc][enter][1] allowing to reflash the Manuf partition with an RS232 sent image.
Perhaps finally a way to repair TI-Nspire CX calculators whose Manuf has been damaged.

critor

According to the new Boot1 log, the new TI-Nspire CX CR4 are faster as slightly overclocked:

1. Clocks:  CPU = 156MHz   AHB = 78MHz   APB = 39MHz  

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156MHz instead of 132MHz - and therefore a 18% speed increase !

hikari_calyx

Thanks for providing valuable information, critor.

name:=rand()

Thank you for all that information.
By the way, it can be extremely tough to programme a game with Ndless on CX CR4...Since we have to work out a way to deal with the display problem.

我是宝贝

Do you have any pictures of it?

我是宝贝

Do you have any pictures of it?

ZephRay

I'm curious about whether the screen itself feature a resolution of 240*RGB*320 instead of originally 320*RGB*240.