[Dwedit]

The order was:

TI-81 (1990)

TI-85 (1992)

TI-82 (1993)

TI-80 (1995)

TI-92 (1995)

TI-83 (1996)

TI-86 (1996)

TI-73 (1998)

TI-83 Plus (1999)

TI-89 (1998)

TI-92 Plus (1998)

TI-83 Plus Silver Edition (2001)

TI-84 Plus (2004)

TI-84 Plus Silver Edition (2004)

[kstrauser]

Anyone here have an idea why the models jumped around like that? Like why'd the 82 come out after the 85, or the 83 after the 92?

[jacobolus]

They had different models with different capabilities. As they made minor style changes, they bumped the numbers slightly. The 81–82–83–84 were basically the same concept, as were the 85–86. The 89 and 92 were higher-end models. The 80 and 73 are simpler models intended for middle school.

All of them are basically a multi-generational scam perpetrated against the hapless parents of American high school students who were told that they needed to buy overpriced anachronistic calculators for their kids to succeed in school. In my opinion the calculators have overall caused more pedagogical harm than benefit; the students would be better served by some combination of (a) problems that can be solved without the tedious but trivial numerical calculations these calculators support, or (b) are solved using a real programming language. If someone really wants to assign simple numerical problems, give the kids slide rules.

Calculators of this type used to make sense for an engineer doing work in the field somewhere, but make no sense in the context of a classroom.

[Aeolun]

Huh. I have only good memories of this calculator. Would buy for my kids in a heartbeat. The fact that it barely changed is a feature to me. I know exactly what they’d be getting.

[wartijn_]

The scam doesn’t just work in the US. In The Netherlands most secondary school students had, and I think still have, to buy these. I imagine in other countries too.

There is an interesting side effect from having always used TI calculators. They use a dot as the decimal separator, not a comma like we do here. There is usually some option to switch, but the hardware button obviously stays the same, so I’ve always been taught to just make that switch in my head, and it has become the natural thing for me to do. I see 1,000.50 on a screen I write down 1.000,50. When I use software that uses a comma as the decimal separator, I get annoyed and it takes some mental effort to enter the right values.

[mrexroad]

> scam

… that continues no matter what. I gave my kid my 89 from the late 90s—I was happy to avoid the TI student tax. Then a year or two back, the college board banned the 89 from certain tests/classes and so I had to cough up for an 84. Even if you take care of your stuff, treat it well to pass on to your kids, the Man finds a way to extract their cut.

[jacobolus]

Plenty of students succeed just fine without owning a graphing calculator (they can spend a few minutes learning the handful of test-relevant features and borrow one for the exam). Thankfully as of this year there is also a Desmos option.

[Dwedit]

I think you can flash a TI83 Plus ROM to a TI73 by using an exploit? One exploit was that flashing an OS writes all the ROM, then checks the signature afterwards, then erases it if it fails. Pull batteries at the correct time and...

[CydeWeys]

One other factor that others haven't yet covered is that the different lines had different capabilities, e.g. the T-89 had Computer Algebra System symbolic manipulation meaning it could pretty much solve many types of math problems on its own, so it wasn't generally allowed in school. And then the Ti-85/86 was a step down, but had matrix support that the lower models lacked, so it was necessary for some specific types of classes.

My favorite was always the TI-85/86 line. I loved those F1-F5 buttons right beneath the screen, which made the interface overall better to navigate. The first programming I ever did was on one of those (either the 85 or 82, can't exactly remember at this point which I owned first). And, the only thing of note I ever had stolen from me was a TI-82, taken out of my unattended backpack by another student during gym class :( (And I had even carved my name into the back of it with a knife, so it would've been identifiable.)

[ethbr1]

This. The thread's confusion comes from looking at these as computers: more capabilities are always an improvement.

In common use, they're intended as mathematical learning aids, a function for which very specific sets of functionality (and no more) are required.

F.ex. basic matrix ops but no auto-solvers

Similar to how you wouldn't give a kid learning how to construct an argumentative essay access to a full LLM if the goal is learning how to perform the task.

[kstrauser]

From a product POV, sure. From an end user’s perspective, I strongly dislike that. There’s no room for growth there. Buy the model that does matrices when you’re taking linear algebra, and you learn that model through and through. Then take an engineering class where you need a solved, and now you have to use a different device that works subtly differently in enough ways that you have to learn all about it.

I just want one device that does everything so my new learning can build on my old.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere here, I love the TI-85 I used through college. I’m no partisan. However, I think that for anything outside a school context, that means skipping any device marketed as “ok to use on tests” and buying an HP. I scarcely need the cool stuff of the HP50g or DM42n I picked up along the way, but if I ever do, I know it’s already in there and waiting for me to discover it.

[ethbr1]

The smarter way for TI to market and grade segment would have been following IBM's supercomputing footsteps and firmware-locking feature sets.

So one could attest that a calculator was currently running the "Grade 6-US" feature set standard.

But I imagine in the 1990s doing so at consumer device scale was dicier. I.e. where would upgrades be applied?

[0manrho]

They were different lines. The numbers aren't mean to be chronological; similar to how AMD released some 5000 series AM4 Ryzen chips long after they'd moved on to AM5 and 7000/9000 series.

TI83 (1996) was a successor to the TI82 (1993) which was a refresh/update of the TI81 (1990).

TI85 (1992) was the second model they made, originally intended as a higher end version of the TI81.

Similar reasoning for the rest of their line up. Different models had different features, and then those models would get incremental updates/refreshes over the years.

I wasn't part of the team or anything, so if anyone has any insight to why exactly they called it that in the first place, I'd be interested to know, but generally speaking the answer is: When they released the first one in 1990, they didn't name it under the presumption that this family of devices would be a staple educational/academic electronics device for the next 3 decades with dozen(s?) of different iterations/generations over the years.

[jordanb]

A lot of it had to do with capability. The TI 92 was considerably more capable than the 83. The 89 had better software than the 92 but with a smaller form factor. The 92+ was the 92 with the 89 software.

[FarmerPotato]

The encyclopedia of TI calculators is http://www.datamath.org

Joerg Warner has been collecting them exhaustively, and peering inside for date codes and such.

[MengerSponge]

If anybody here can illuminate where these names came from, I'd love to know!