Fuck Texas Instruments. All my homies hate Texas Instruments
Seriously trying to charge $100 for a calculator running 50-year-old hardware (the ti-84’s CPU, the zilog z80 was created in 1976). Fucking ridiculous
But at the same time as a semiconductor manufacturer i really like them. They have high quality ics for literally everything. I think that they are so big that the different parts of the company dont even interact.
TI USB controllers and switching supplies are half of my BOMs
But they seem to last forever, so there are a ton available in the aftermarket. My TI-89 from 1997 still works like new, and I plan to bequeath it to my son
Only the ti83-84 are shit. The old ti89 and newer ti nspire are actually really good. I bought a ti89 on eBay for $20 and even though it is 20 something years old it’s still better than there new ti84 color stuff.
It’s also a racket because all the freaking textbooks used it so it because require to have that exact one at my school
The textbooks all used it because TI made it that way, they pressured the education agencies to make it so.
But they make the z80 and they’re so proud of the shitty 8 bit processor they made 50 years ago so they’re forcing people to use it and pay modern prices for it. They eventually made an ez80 which is like the z80 but better in some ways and it sounds impressive but if you ever try to design a homebrew computer out of one, you’ll find that it’s not very worthwhile due to the lack of a external wait state insertion pin and if you want to build something better than a z80 or 6502 homebrew, there are better choices than an ez80.
They may be expensive for what you get, but they’re built to last. Still using the TI-83 that I got in 1997 and it works as good as the day I got it.
Why is it that all good calculator manufacturers also have a dark side? I have an RPN calculator made by HP, back in the day they made the holy Grail of RPNs the 32 SII. But they are the single worst thing that has happened to printer ink.
deleted by creator
What do they all have in common?
They all go brrrrr.
They also were one of the biggest locomotive manufacturer in the world until they sold their locomotive branch to Wabtec
calculators to help you do math and guns, checks out for Texas.
My favorite example of this is is Hitachi. They are basically only known for vibrators and large construction equipment… How those got combined in one conpany I have no idea.
I bought my last calculator for school in 2009, I think? Now I’ve got the hiper calc app which is pretty decent. Ha! Take that, math teacher “you’ll never have a calculator in youpocket all the time.”
I’ll take my TI-84+ over my phone anytime tho