So many whipper-snappers here talking about their TI-83+ and later models. When I was in high school ca. 1994 my trusty TI-82 kept me quite busy writing BASIC games. We used to share games with the data sharing cable, I wonder if any of mine still survive somewhere. I still have the physical calculator tucked away in some box, but it is certain that the batteries are long since dead, and all of the volatile memory faded away.
In high school, my calculus teacher discovered that I had written programs on my TI-82 to help me solve homework questions. Much to my surprise, he approved! He explained that his objective was to teach us to solve the problems using whatever tools we had at our disposal—writing a BASIC program to solve the problem was not cheating, rather it was making the best of my resources.
Same here! I had to "delete" my programs though (I think I was able to hide/archive it and restore it after the teacher had checked my empty program list... or did I write an emulator of an empty programs list? I can't remember).
I also wrote the first TI-BASIC tutorial in German on my first blog as a high-schooler.
It got pretty popular with it's target group (other high-schoolers who were bored in Math class), and 12 years later I got an email by an unknown person who had randomly stumbled upon my blog again and thanked me for writing it. That one email had been enough to make it all worth it by itself.
Seeing the headline I came here thinking I'd read about TI-58/59 hacking. I actually had no idea there was a whole later generation of TI calculators based on the Z80!
I spent endless hours messing around with my Dad's TI-58 in 1977 and recently bought two examples on a popular online auction site to preserve for when I have that kind of spare time again.
In high school, my calculus teacher discovered that I had written programs on my TI-82 to help me solve homework questions. Much to my surprise, he approved! He explained that his objective was to teach us to solve the problems using whatever tools we had at our disposal—writing a BASIC program to solve the problem was not cheating, rather it was making the best of my resources.