one of my little side hobbies is rescuing dead graphing calculators at thrift shops
i found this TI-83 completely dead with 25+ year old leaking batteries inside of the bay, and brought it home for $8.
after a little cleanup of the battery bay and contacts with a weak acid, it sprung back to life for the first time in decades. amazingly, the original owner's programs were still intact, thanks to the backup battery.
per every canadian math teacher's instruction, the original owner - Fraser D. - had his name engraved into the shell. 😀
this calculator is destined to go back into use as soon as i can find a local math teacher who wants it in their classroom. given that a TI-84 calculator is still $190 in canada - a truly disgusting price for a computer running a 40-year-old Zilog Z80 processor (!), a free TI-83 will sound good to some kid out there.
(whom, i hope, will spend all of their Math 10 time learning how to program TI-BASIC instead of solving polynomials)
