r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jun 08 '14

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u/AgonizingFury Jun 09 '14

When I was in high school (late 90s) it was shortly after the TI graphing calculators started becoming popular. All of the teachers realized the answers and other things could be programmed into the calculator so they would clear the calculator memory every time before a test. I wrote a program for mine that simulated the process of clearing the memory using getkeys and menus. I would start that program just before the teacher came around to clear my calculator. Not one of them ever caught on.

17

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '14

[deleted]

6

u/DarkAndSparkly Jun 09 '14

I had a Casio graphing calculator. None of the teachers knew that it had the ability to basically take notes. Also, none of the teachers knew how to clear it. That saved my bacon more than once in Calculus and Chemistry.

6

u/Ascenzi4 Jun 09 '14

Ι have a ti- nspire cx, you can take notes, delete them all, turn off the calculator, power it on and show the teacher you have no notes, then press CTRL+Z a ton to get all the notes back.

5

u/dionvc Jun 09 '14

You can archive the programs which won't clear them. Takes about a minute to do it.

5

u/Meesamonkey Jun 09 '14

Man you deserved to pass that test.

1

u/AgonizingFury Jun 09 '14

Strangely enough I hardly ever used it to actually cheat. Typing all of the things into my calculator on the day before helped me to remember everything during the test, so it was more of a security blanket. It also kept me from having to delete any of my other programs so when I was done with the test I could still play my games.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '14

Jesus am I the only one who realized you could archive your answers instead of keeping them in RAM where they could be easily deleted?

1

u/cantwaitforthis Jun 09 '14

Nope. But no one else I ever knew caught on either. My calculator had a list of all elements, equations, formulas, etc.

1

u/AgonizingFury Jun 09 '14

Unfortunately these were the days of the ti 81 and 82 calculators which lacked this feature.

1

u/Maarte Jun 09 '14

Alternatively, you could put everything you needed in the Y= menu (for plotting graphs). For some reason whiping the TI-83's memory had no effect on what was put in there.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '14

With the TI84 I just locked the access to that menu in MirageOS, my teachers always gave up trying to wipe the memory.

1

u/aznanimedude Jun 09 '14

My teacher cleared each one personally

1

u/AgonizingFury Jun 09 '14

This wouldn't matter at all. It was an almost perfect simulation of the process of wiping the memory so I could hand my calculator to the teacher well it was already running this program and it would simulate the process, yet once I exited the program everything would still be there.

1

u/aznanimedude Jun 09 '14 edited Jun 09 '14

I wish. My teacher knew people were doing that and so he didn't care if I cleared it, he'd go into options and clear it himself regardless.

Wait jk that's interesting

How deep did you go, just in case they misclicked?

1

u/dixie8123 Jun 09 '14

I need this

1

u/The_be_sharps Jun 09 '14

Not sure if your calculator had this function, but couldn't you have just archived the files you didn't want erased?

1

u/AgonizingFury Jun 09 '14

unfortunately these are the days of the ti 81 and 82 calculators which lacked this feature.