Re: DIY calc Message #51 Posted by Paul Brogger on 26 Nov 2007, 12:40 p.m., in response to message #47 by Randy
I've got a 28s in similar shape. (It simply fell apart after repeated flexing in my son's overloaded high school backpack.)
One of my (many!) unrealized project plans is to drill out all the heat stakes front & back, and rebuild the calculator with tiny hex bolts and cap nuts. (Stainless for the 28s, brass for the 19bII ;-)
I think a clamshell with an industrial-strength look about it -- dozens of hex-head fasteners arrayed about its surfaces -- would be pretty cool. However, such a treatment would do nothing about the infamous battery compartment cover. (Bummer!)
The ONLY thing I've actually played with recently is trying to put a 41c keyboard on a TI-83+SE. (I looked into shoe-horning the 83+'s PCB and LCD into a 41C case -- probably with the card reader's case attached -- but the main and LCD PCBs seem just a bit too wide, and I'm reluctant to start filing them down. 8-0 )
If anyone knows that the 84+'s PCB is significantly smaller, I'd like to hear about it! It does appear that its LCD is integrated with the keyboard/processor PCB, rather than attached via a ribbon cable. (That feature of the 83+ and 89 seems to offer some options for creative display placement.)
The TI 83+ (now 84+) and 89 do offer PC development environments and emulators, albeit ones intended for development of "applications" rather than variations on the OS. (I'm not at all sure of the significance or malleability of those limitations.)
Anyway, lots of talk, not much action. I just recently put the disassembled parts away in a box -- the 83+'s LCD board separated from the main PCB; its keys and everything else loose and begging for application . . .
(BTW, I swapped the original 83+SE guts and keys into a straight 83+ case, and the result is an especially handsome hybrid -- big, bold legends on the key faces, and none of the translucent glitter of its original case.)
Edited: 26 Nov 2007, 5:06 p.m.
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