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TILP: beta-testing...

Started by Lionel Debroux, October 25, 2015, 04:30:17 pm

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October 11, 2016, 07:22:19 pm #45 Last Edit: October 11, 2016, 07:33:25 pm by Adriweb
Well, giving away a few marketing calcs to help create a (mostly-)Linux calc connectivity software is hardly counterproductive, quite the contrary ;)
And it also have nothing to do with other decisions like the anti-downgrade and security measures on the Nspire, which are pretty much imposed by exam boards. It's not even the same people dealing with that.

It also helps that we're from TI-Planet, which TI (and even more so TI-France) has known for some time now, not some random people trying to get free products for obscure reasons. The quality of review articles when we're given samples to try out, for instance, speaks for itself, I suppose.

In general, it's much easier to see negative criticism everywhere because it stands out easily - that doesn't mean there's no good too :) There are many nice things happening that lots of people don't know about. Personally, I"ve had the opportunity, several times even, to meet with TI developers, managers, etc. It's extremely enriching to be able to grasp the point-of-view of "everyone" involved in this world. Being too biased (one way or the other) doesn't do much good... and also good communication is key. Too bad it's not happening more often with TI and the community, for instance, only a few of us have been able to get to talk to them directly.

Anyway, this thread is slowly going off-topic :P

Lionel Debroux

October 11, 2016, 07:35:05 pm #46 Last Edit: October 11, 2016, 08:25:39 pm by Lionel Debroux
Quotewow I'm really surprised as I only got negative news about TI like making it impossible to downgrade the calcs and stuff like that.

It's probably because their annoying, counter-productive and nasty roadblocks to usage of their calculators are much more important, for usage by actual end users. Like nearly everybody in the community, I thoroughly hate their moves which rub users the wrong way. But it wouldn't be fair for me not to mention that for the narrow purposes of communication with calculators and interoperability with TI's official software (which is, fundamentally, this topic's focus), the situation could be worse. Sure, TI should provide documentation (their competitors usually don't, so they'd probably edge them out even further that way), and I wish I could be paid for working on libti*/gfm/tilp for several weeks to make significant progress on the todo/wish list (I need a rest on my free time, and I'm already not having enough of it)... but I bought only about 6 (5 TI, 1 HP Prime) of my ~26 graphing calculators; before that, Romain didn't buy all of his calculators and cables; and TI is pretty much all for me + contributors carrying on the work.
The next maintainer of libti* (or a replacement for it ?) should logically inherit at least the relevant part of this collection, when I pass the baton.

QuoteHow comes they on he one hand support people like you but on the other hand try to lock out some of our stuff?

Supporting Romain and me only has business upsides. It's not even one calculator per year on average (in about 7 years and 4 months, I got a CX CAS in 2011, 84+CSE in 2013, 83PCE and 82A in 2015 - in terms of monetary value, these four approximately cancel the Nspire Clickpad, 84+, 89T and 83+SE I bought before picking up Romain's collection), so if the fact that there's a working, even usually pretty reliable way to communicate with TI graphing calculators using Linux or one of the BSDs yields a single additional TI graphing calculator purchase per year (!), TI still wins.

Throwing legal or technical roadblocks at me + contributors has clear business downsides. The current top-level management at TI EdTech is perfectly aware that the "TI signing key controversy" episode - sending DMCA takedown notices to users for stuff whose complete legality is crystal clear, splashing negative publicity all over the Internet, and ending on e.g. the EFF's DMCA takedown hall of shame - was a complete no-no, a path which lawyers really shouldn't have gone on, and an error which is not to be done again (at least as long as they're at the helm, I suppose).

Attempting to lock down calculators (though miserably failing at it - their best protection is in fact that hardly anybody cares) is attempting to protect business in the face of harmful reactions of the extraordinarily dumb policies of standardized testing regulation authorities, which fantasize the threat of tampering with their dumb exams. TI needs to show these counter-productive humans that they're trying to do something against their irrational fears, otherwise they would (theoretically) risk some of their models being banned from some exams, resulting in measurable sales losses. Locking down calculators stinks because it screws users and reduces the power and usefulness of said calculators, but in the current and foreseeable state of things, calculator manufacturers can't really afford not pleasing those who can have an impact on their calculator division's bottom line, by eschewing exam testing modes from new and future calculator models...
Calculator manufacturers can't just tell the standardized testing regulation authorities what we calculator users and lovers would like to tell them ^^
Member of the TI-Chess Team.
Co-admin of TI-Planet.


pff even I got a piece of code into the final exams without anyone noticing it... :P
(only displaying LULZ but still I could have done it with any program)
the main problem is that schools can't afford a second set of calcs only to  used for exams... :(
But I'm glad to hear TI is much nicer that I thought :)

DJ Omnimaga

Quote from: Lionel Debroux on October 10, 2016, 06:09:30 pm
QuoteAlso, can it do ROM dumps for the TI-82 Advanced and TI-84 Plus-T?

Nope: this would require exploiting these calculators, but the method to do so is not public :)
Having libticalcs use exploits for holes in the calculator's software is not an issue in itself, as shown by Benjamin Moody's ROM dumper for the 85 and old 82 models, or even the Nspire OS 1.x dumper, which leverages direct directory traversal.
Do you know why the method for exploiting those calculators is not public? Is it due to fear of retaliation from TI in the form of locking the calculators even more? Is it due to fears of a cease and desist letter? Or is it just due to the author not having finished the exploit itself?

As for TI themselves, they try to protect the exam mode on their calc, but I have the feeling that for monochrome models they mainly want to reduce their features for the greater glory of more expensive color calcs. Otherwise, the CE would be locked down as well.


IIRC, BrandonW's method is (so far) leaving the calc in an unusable state after the exploit, so it wouldn't be working for many things. I haven't followed that much on those calcs, but I'm not sure if he's had time to work on it more lately. Oh well, at least for now it was enough to get a dump, apparently.
There are several tools online for people to dump their own calcs, so one more is probably not going to cause a big difference, even if it's doing that by weird means (well, TI isn't giving much choice...). Plus, people who own those models are the ones not interested by calcs, most of the time, so it's likely they're not going to be the ones looking for hacks and stuff. There's far more exciting things happening pretty much anywhere else than on a 82A :P

DJ Omnimaga

Hm I see. That said, now that the 82A has been released in English in Europe as the TI-84+T, I suspect that more people might get interested by the hack over time there if the market share compared to color models is still significant.

Lionel Debroux


Among the changes:
  • I added the initial support for two additional models:
Also, I used previous packaging work on OBS by Fabian "Vogtinator" Vogt for development versions of libti*/gfm/tilp, the result (completely untested !) is available from https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/home:debrouxl:TILP .

Next up:
Member of the TI-Chess Team.
Co-admin of TI-Planet.

DJ Omnimaga

June 06, 2019, 05:59:16 pm #52 Last Edit: June 06, 2019, 06:14:55 pm by DJ Omnimaga
Wow, I had completely forgot that TILP was now supporting the TI-Nspire CX. Also nice to see this still being updated. I will probably use TILP from now on since I am on a newer Windows install with no current TI software installed.

Can TILP send/receive TI-85 files via the Silverlink cable?

EDIT: By the way, when I launched TILP, I got an error saying that iconv.dll was missing (I am on Windows 10). I had to go download it and put it on my computer manually in order to get the software to launch.

Lionel Debroux

Uh, looks like I missed your reply here... sorry. I need to check whether I'm subscribed to the topic.
* yup, TILP can communicate with the TI-85 through SilverLink and transfer variables in a non-silent way. Not much else, the 82/85 protocol is the oldest and most limited implementation of DBUS;
* in the GTK+ runtime installer, did you check the "install compatibility DLLs" (or somesuch message) checkbox ? I always do, as IIRC, it's required.

I've just produced a new version of the Windows installer, https://tiplanet.org/beta/tilp2-setup.exe . I haven't tested it on a real Windows install. The aforementioned changes, and more, are available :)
Member of the TI-Chess Team.
Co-admin of TI-Planet.

DJ Omnimaga

Thanks for the answers. I knew that the 82/85 lacked silent linking, but I am glad that those who don't have a computer old enough to feature a serial port nor can afford that $70 serial to USB adapter I saw at Staples once can send files on those old calc models.

I think I checked the DLL box but maybe I could be wrong.

Lionel Debroux

July 14, 2019, 06:54:39 am #55 Last Edit: July 16, 2019, 06:38:08 am by Lionel Debroux
I have produced another build, available from https://tiplanet.org/beta/tilp2-setup.exe as usual. The main change from the previous build is the initial support for CBL / CBR / CBR2 / CBL2 / LabPro (/ TI-Presenter, hopefully) probing; also, I have greatly expanded the functionality and scriptability of the test_ticalcs_2 CLI tool, which is helping me a lot making tests, and packaged it in the TILP installer.


Member of the TI-Chess Team.
Co-admin of TI-Planet.

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