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Development => Calculators => Calculator News, Coding, Help & Talk => Topic started by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 12, 2015, 11:11:16 PM

Title: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 12, 2015, 11:11:16 PM
People on Cemetech have analyzed TI-84 Plus CE Flash applications that Texas Instruments released a few days before. It appears that they contains a 2048-bits signature (http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11339). The signature key is required to sign APPs and make them valid for use on the new ez80 calculator, and there is no sign that Texas Instruments have any plans to release a SDK to develop such software.

Since factoring an key this large is impossible with today's technology, could this mean that the TI-83 Premium CE and TI-84 Plus CE will be locked down against third-party Flash APPs and be restricted to only a few developers such as TI themselves? ASM programs are possible to write no matter the outcome of this, so 3rd-party ASM development on those new calculators is perfectly safe, but in some cases, choosing a 8xp ASM file over a Flash  APP is not the ideal situation, especially if TI decides also to add an executable code limit to that new calculator line, like the 8 KB limit on the TI-83+. Or could TI be planning a paid SDK? After all, back in the early 2000's, Flash APP development costed money before TI finally decided to make the SDK free of charge.

In conclusions, there is a possibility that for the TI-83 Premium CE and TI-84 Plus CE, we might be limited to the Asm() command to launch native language softwares.

Source: http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11347 and http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=178718#p178718
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Snektron on March 12, 2015, 11:59:29 PM
Why does it feel like TI always has some kind of thing to make nice things suck? (Well i guess most big companies do that). But there'll probably be some way around it, though i dont even know how app sign on a 84+ works <_<
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 13, 2015, 12:42:27 AM
I have the feeling that they want to sell apps or allow certain companies to do so and thus, are trying to prevent people from being able to hack paid apps. Or it could be to comply with tests and only allow specific apps.

At least we got 8xp ASM programs and more RAM, but I wonder if something like Doors CSE is possible as nostub program? We also still don't know if that calc supports hardware scrolling and parser hooks.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: aetios on March 13, 2015, 06:20:39 AM
I wouldn't even care if said paid apps were, well, actually sort of good, but most of them aren't. (ZoomMath isn't exactly what I call a stunning app, at least not for the price it goes for <_<)
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 13, 2015, 11:15:06 AM
Yeah I would say that Zoomath is nice, but it should probably be closer to $20-40 at most and even then that would be a bit on the pricy side. When you pay more for a software than you did for the platform it runs on there is a serious problem about the software price. >.<
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: CKH4 on March 13, 2015, 12:21:20 PM
We need a giant computer dedicated to breaking ti's signing key. :P
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: pimathbrainiac on March 13, 2015, 12:35:37 PM
Actually, as stated by Kerm, TI has said nothing on the subject yet, and Kerm was going to ask about it at T^3. I wouldn't conclude anything about it yet, personally.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 13, 2015, 02:13:06 PM
Considering he asked TI to fix CSE bugs before in vain, I am not convinced that TI will do much either this time, other than "listening".

Quote from: CKH4 on March 13, 2015, 12:21:20 PM
We need a giant computer dedicated to breaking ti's signing key. :P
And a time machine to travel in 2134 AD to acquire the said computer.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Duke "Tape" Eiyeron on March 13, 2015, 03:22:27 PM
Or wait until you find a way to get around the protection! :p
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Snektron on March 13, 2015, 03:45:23 PM
Quote from: CKH4 on March 13, 2015, 12:21:20 PM
We need a giant computer dedicated to breaking ti's signing key. :P
4 words: Millions of z80 processors.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 13, 2015, 04:15:18 PM
Quote from: Eiyeron on March 13, 2015, 03:22:27 PM
Or wait until you find a way to get around the protection! :p
that could work, but then we're in for another ndless cat and mouse game like with the Nspire and Kerm previously explaines that he was against the idea of going through such hassle  and won't support it. http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=232146#232146 But again if the protection sucks like with Boot 1.03 then maybe TI will give up after our first hack.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Caleb Hansberry on March 13, 2015, 04:39:38 PM
After all the hype about the new calculator and it's cool abilities it'd be hilarious if it was locked down  >:D I agree that hacking it like the nspire would be cool, but tedious and annoying - however if it came down to it, and the CE was their #1 calculator after discontinuing the BE and CSE, I think it would be the option people would take anyway.

QuoteAnd a time machine to travel in 2134 AD to acquire the said computer.
Do you mean 9108 AD?

Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 13, 2015, 10:35:58 PM
That said, I don't think it will be as bad as the Nspire. In the worst case scenario, we would simply be forced to program ASM/C via 8xp programs that cannot exceed 8 KB of executable code and 64 KB each, meaning for large games there would be many sub-programs cluttering your menu. And in the case where this calc lacks parser hooks (still need to check that out), then xLIBC would need to use OpenLib/ExecLib instead of the real() and det() tokens. This might not be ideal since I heard that OpenLib/ExecLib were buggy before.

We would still get many great ASM programs. It's just that it would be inconvenient to be unable to write them in APP format. Notice how many great games came out as APPs after the TI-83+ SDK became free. Hybrid BASIC programmers would also be greatly affected if they were forced to rely on libraries that use the Asm() command, because Asm(prgmNAME) searches the VAT to find prgmNAME, which takes a long while (see how slow The Reign of Legends 3 got)
Quote from: Caleb Hansberry on March 13, 2015, 04:39:38 PM
QuoteAnd a time machine to travel in 2134 AD to acquire the said computer.
Do you mean 9108 AD?
Maybe? :P



EDIT: Hm if you read Cemetech, it appears that all ports are blocked rather than just the LED. ASM coders will thus be much more limited in what they can do, due to lack of direct hardware access. Maybe it will be like PRIZM dev?
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Snektron on March 14, 2015, 08:03:55 PM
Wait, what? Does that mean developers have to rely on TI's slow routines? It's like they don't want people to buy their stuff for anything
other than calculation <_<
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 14, 2015, 09:59:06 PM
Indeed. No direct input, for example, so in games , multiple keypresses will be impossible. We also won't have access to hardware scrolling or setting half res mode. That's unless exploits are found, but then will TI patch them?

I have postponed purchasing this calc until I am sure that hybrid BASIC or pure BASIC are viable options for fast games. I know that my maze game would work well due to the bug fixes, but if stuff like First Fantasy is impossible then it won't interest me enough. There is still the HP Prime, after all, and HP jist killed the HP 50g so they can now concentrate their efforts on the Prime firmware.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: tr1p1ea on March 15, 2015, 12:05:43 AM
The _getCSC system call does support multiple arrow keypresses (on previous calcs at least), but its still far slower than direct access.

APPS are still an unknown at this point. Hooks might not be easily implemented either.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 15, 2015, 03:23:38 AM
Oh ok, I thought it only registered 1 key at a time. Doesn't it also lack quick key repeat (basically having a delay when you start holding down the key)? And yeah if you lack direct hardware access then it might be hard to implement hooks.

As for apps I wonder if it will be like Casio's picture converter where only specific people like teachers have access to it... who knows? Maybe it will just cost a massive amount of money. Of course in such case we could donate in mass to Kerm or something so he can develop Doors CE 9.0 but that is not really ideal for other people who might also want to develop apps.

However, is it really necessary for an app to be signed to run on calc? On the 83+ I remember that with Axe, back in the days its apps were not signed. However you could still run them 16 times. Would it be the same on the CE? In such case, the player would just need to resend the app to his calc each time he ran it 16 times, right? In such case, it might not be very ideal, but at least it would be better than nothing and we could just leave our apps unsigned. Doors CE could then be made so that you only need to run it once.

I am not sure if this is accurate, but that's what I seem to have gathered from early Axe dev in 2010.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: novenary on March 15, 2015, 08:33:26 AM
Ew that sucks. Why the hell do you do that TI ? They seem to be more and more hostile to the community. First they killed the awesome 68k line with the piece of crap they call the Nspire, now they're taking away the z80 line ? The alternatives that are available now boil down to Casio (with their calcs that easily compete with the 68k line) and the HP prime that should have beaten the hell out of the Nspire but ended up not doing it. >.>
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Duke "Tape" Eiyeron on March 15, 2015, 09:36:42 AM
Ahem, now their calcs can rival with Nspire in terms of pure power. For the features no. Nspire calcs are the calcs with the most feature I could ever see. And its a shame that the Prime didn't got what it deserved, it looked like a rad calculator.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Snektron on March 15, 2015, 10:13:42 AM
Welp, it looks like someone needs to do some hardcore hacking. I also like how TI released the OS before the calculator.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: novenary on March 15, 2015, 12:00:49 PM
Well the Prime has xcas built in. It's extremely featureful, just not integrated the right way into the os. :/
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 15, 2015, 04:10:55 PM
Quote from: Streetwalrus on March 15, 2015, 08:33:26 AM
Ew that sucks. Why the hell do you do that TI ? They seem to be more and more hostile to the community. First they killed the awesome 68k line with the piece of crap they call the Nspire, now they're taking away the z80 line ? The alternatives that are available now boil down to Casio (with their calcs that easily compete with the 68k line) and the HP prime that should have beaten the hell out of the Nspire but ended up not doing it. >.>
They blocked hardware access on the CE in order to prevent people from tampering with the exam LED and PTT mode, because they don't want a repeat of what happened with the TI-84+ PTT mode. However, they're doing it wrong: They should instead just block access to those features in the hardware because everything else poses no threat.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 17, 2015, 05:49:23 AM
So yeah, I think that for RPGs and such stuff, our best bet will be if someone writes a map engine program that also does movement. Unless exploits or other tricks are found as workaround to the Asm() command, this is probably the best we will be able to get from TI-83 Premium CE and 84 Plus CE hybrid BASIC:

(https://img.ourl.ca/screenshot001-3.gif)

This is The Reign of Legends 3 btw, running at 15 MHz. It came out before Omnicalc became OS 1.15+ compatible and before xLIB became a thing. Granted, with somehting like xLIB as 8xp things wouldn't be that bad, but walking would still be very slow.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: tr1p1ea on March 17, 2015, 06:14:42 AM
Lol - Yeah I do think it will still be possible to have nice graphics and OK speed ... It just sucks because the potential for MUCH better graphical performance is there - just locked away.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 17, 2015, 06:17:11 AM
The worst part is that apparently the calc is clocked to 14 MHz during most operations and math only runs about 15-20% faster, according to TI-Planet and Cemetech reports, respectively. When pipelining is full it would apparently run at 48 MHz and screen stuff is 2.6 times faster. What speed will ASM coders have access to if hardware is locked down?

As for the speed of hybrid BASIC I think someone will have to write a map engine or something.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Snektron on March 17, 2015, 02:12:51 PM
maybe if someone really wants, they can write a hack that changes code in the 1st ram page (if that works) that stops the OS from restricting hardware access,
but thats probably not how it works :P
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 17, 2015, 03:50:19 PM
I'm fairly sure it's much more complicated than that. Unless TI gives us more access I think it will have to be something like Ndless being implemented into one single shell or something and that shell coming with plenty of useful advanced routines for ASM and hybrid BASIC coders. Ideally, to reduce chances that TI patches the exploit and to delay such patch, the exploit should probably come with a license disallowing re-use of that code for unlocking exam modes and such things and to fork the program to allow doing so. Of course, it's still possible that people will just check how it was done then release a PTTKiller tool, but since it's against the rules of all active TI forums to post links to such tools, they probably won't make much noise here.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: novenary on March 18, 2015, 09:55:00 PM
Well the TI85 and 92 were hacked for asm even though they didn't originally support it. So I guess it can be managed.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Adriweb on March 19, 2015, 04:40:11 AM
So, you guys may have missed that:

More tests, with tr1p1ea's program (https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=173318) showing a full-screen image scrolling:
(https://i.imgur.com/7yhBKqa.png) (https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=173318)

Video: http://gfycat.com/ScholarlyFeminineEeve
(it'd be nice to have a webm bbcode :D)

A full scroll takes around 4.2 seconds (with USB not plugged in), and according to Runer112, that's like ≈ 35 FPS.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Duke "Tape" Eiyeron on March 19, 2015, 06:24:37 AM
USB does slow calcs? I've never noticed that. Howuch does it slow down the calc?
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Snektron on March 19, 2015, 09:14:46 AM
Nawh, for a second i thought you had an emulator >.<
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 19, 2015, 01:18:47 PM
Quote from: Adriweb on March 19, 2015, 04:40:11 AM
So, you guys may have missed that:

More tests, with tr1p1ea's program (https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=173318) showing a full-screen image scrolling:
(https://i.imgur.com/7yhBKqa.png) (https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=173318)

Video: http://gfycat.com/ScholarlyFeminineEeve
(it'd be nice to have a webm bbcode :D)

A full scroll takes around 4.2 seconds (with USB not plugged in), and according to Runer112, that's like ≈ 35 FPS.
Wow amazing, I didn't know his program could run on actual hardware. Does it use the screen scrolling features or does he display the entire image every frame? That is definitively very fast no matter what. O.O

Quote from: Eiyeron on March 19, 2015, 06:24:37 AM
USB does slow calcs? I've never noticed that. Howuch does it slow down the calc?
It does on the HP Prime at least.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Snektron on March 19, 2015, 01:56:05 PM
Probably because of the interrupts. Maybe if you disable them it will run faster
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 19, 2015, 02:04:32 PM
Wouldn't that prevent the calc from being recognized by TI-Connect afterward? In such case, ASM coders really gotta make sure that their programs successfully re-enables them on exit. That said, since the calc slows down in USB mode even during ASM programs, does it mean that we can now send files from/to the calc even when it's busy doing stuff?
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Snektron on March 19, 2015, 02:07:36 PM
well you can always reenable interrupts after youre done, though it will block ALL interrupts and you probably don't want that
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Adriweb on March 19, 2015, 04:56:21 PM
It runs (probably) a bit faster without interrupts, but then, you wouldn't be able to quit it with pressing a key (which is what's done right now).

Also, with USB plugged in, a full scroll takes ≈5.3s, compared to ≈4.1 seconds if it's not plugged in.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Duke "Tape" Eiyeron on March 19, 2015, 06:12:45 PM
Yeah, that's a noticeable slowdown. :/ Hope that the interrupts can be shut down.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Adriweb on March 20, 2015, 05:08:12 AM
di and ei are still there, and running stuff without interrupts it a bit faster than with them.
But in this case, we want/need them anyway.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: tr1p1ea on March 20, 2015, 05:13:32 AM
Yeah it runs on hardware and its a fullscreen manipulation (not an LCD scroll feature (this LCD doesnt have a scroll feature that im aware of (plus TI locked us out of accessing one even if it did exist))).

Also, yes he does have an Emulator, and hardware :).

I left interrupts running because of the _getCSC syscall, though it could be disabled around the screen update stuff. It's only a test afterall.

That being said, fullscreen graphics are faster than the CSE at least. Not incredibly fast, but it just *might* be fast enough with any luck.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 20, 2015, 05:15:03 AM
Quote from: tr1p1ea on March 20, 2015, 05:13:32 AM
Yeah it runs on hardware and its a fullscreen manipulation (not an LCD scroll feature (this LCD doesnt have a scroll feature that im aware of (plus TI locked us out of accessing one even if it did exist))).

Also, yes he does have an Emulator, and hardware :).

I left interrupts running because of the _getCSC syscall, though it could be disabled around the screen update stuff. It's only a test afterall.

That being said, fullscreen graphics are faster than the CSE at least. Not incredibly fast, but it just *might* be fast enough with any luck.
Aah awesome :D. The screen definitively looks MUCH faster than the CSE. Even if we do lose hardware scrolling, it looks like we will no longer need it from what I saw, or at least it won't be as necessary anymore. :)

Quote from: Adriweb on March 20, 2015, 05:08:12 AM
di and ei are still there, and running stuff without interrupts it a bit faster than with them.
But in this case, we want/need them anyway.
At least you can enable/disable them, right? I am wondering because of all the stories about how locked down the hardware is.

Also it appears that the 84+CE has now been released! O.O tr1p1ea pre-ordered it from Underwood Distributing a while ago and his calc has shipped today. :D I wonder if the French model will be released soon as well?
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Snektron on March 20, 2015, 08:01:57 AM
Wait there is an emulator? Where can i find it? :P
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 20, 2015, 04:45:56 PM
I think it's TI-Smartview, but I think it's a trial and I don't remember if it's publicly available yet. TI-Planet is affiliated with TI-France so they probably got early access.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Snektron on March 20, 2015, 05:32:04 PM
Ah that explains a lot, since i saw it but i was not yet available to download/buy it
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Adriweb on March 20, 2015, 06:44:59 PM
Yep, not publicly available yet.
Hopefully pretty soon...
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Snektron on March 20, 2015, 06:45:42 PM
Or someone should write one :3 (though that probably requires some HW knowlege <_<)
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 20, 2015, 07:41:36 PM
I'm betting jsTIfied will be first.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Duke "Tape" Eiyeron on March 21, 2015, 08:05:31 AM
It should be easier to port from the CSE, the ez80 shouldn't have too much difference from the original Zilog. I hope so.
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Snektron on March 21, 2015, 12:24:55 PM
It does have a 24 bit memory bus instead of a 16 bit though...
Title: Re: 84+CE to be locked down against 3rd-party Flash APP development or tools?
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 22, 2015, 02:33:42 AM
I have the feeling that ASM might not be that hard to get the most of on that calculator too in a not so distant future. The trick though is that it might be best if it somewhat goes unnoticed. If such program advertised itself as a circumvention thing for example then TI might get scared.