TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition hardware test

critor

Hello,



After a first flance at our new TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition in a previous news, you may have expected the software test ?

Well, no, there would ave been so many things to say and to test on the OS if we want to make something good, that you'll have to wait a little bit, and meanwhile, here's a hardware test ;-)


The motherboard reveals an architecture based around 2 main chips, very usual on the latest TI-82 Stats, TI-83 Plus et TI-84:

• the ASIC
• The Flash ROM memory

As supposed, the Flash ROM memory is a MX29LV320ETTI-70G from MXIO, with a capacity of 4MB !
Once the OS installed, 3.5MB of archive memory is coherent. The size of the OS would be similar to the 84+'s one.
We have already met this manufacturer recently with the external Flash-NOR chip in the prototype TI-Nspire Color.



But the most important with a historical evolution, it's the ASIC, the chip that contains the processor and the RAM!


Nothing comes to mind ?
Let's clean its surface:


The ASIC chip is TI-REF 84PLUSB/TA3! :~o
We are talking about the 4x36 ping ASIC chip that equips the TI-84 Plus with HW rev. G and below, as explained in a previous news, and that featured 128KB of RAM!
On the TI-84 Plus with HW rev. H and later, which is the majority of them right now and those on the 84 Pocket, TI used an ASIC called TI-84PLCR/TA1, smaller with  4x25 pins, but which only featured 48KB of RAM. :(




Even if it hasn't been tested yet, we can bet on having 128KB of RAM for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition, and a 15MHz z80 processor.


Having 128KB of RAM is a great news for resources-hungry apps developers (which will be even more with the color....)

The use of the same ASIC chip that on the old 84+ is probably a very good omen for the updates of actual TI-z80 emulators



Let's just hope that the supposed 15MHz will be enough to handle a display color depth of 8 or 16-bits, requiring 4 to 8 times more processing power on screen output operations.

But for the 128KB of RAM, a big thanks to TI which not only proved listening its users asking for it for years, but also by making, I think, an ambitious choice towards the future, opening the gates to a number of community programs and applications that will make this model a success !



Source:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11268&lang=en

urill

What is the gel-like stuff on the ASIC? thermal pad?

chsi

urill 发表于 2013-2-18 17:47
What is the gel-like stuff on the ASIC? thermal pad?

Probably just double-sided tape for the alu foil?

contra-sh

Thank you critor for these amazing pictures