TI-86 Interesting Information

All items with no name were created by me.

The catalog does not list the unit conversion functions. It would be too crowded! This also means that you cannot add them to the Custom menu.
In the unit conversions functions, when a slash or a ^2 is used, it is a different character than the character normally used in the calc. Notice that the slashes in the unit conversion functions look different than the division slash.
The more variables there are on the calculator, the slower everything runs, especially programs. Try deleting all the excess real and temporary variables that many programs you've long ago deleted have generated. Even if they are small, you'll be amazed at how much faster the calc runs.
In the TI-86 program editor, the menus are different. Press GRAPH on the Home Screen. It looks like Y=, RANGE, ZOOM, TRACE, GRAPH, but in a program, it says VARS, RANGE, ZOOM, TRACE, GRAPH. Every single menu and application button is a bit different in the program editor than the Home Screen. For a neat trick, enter the program editor, and press MODE. The program editor-style MODE screen appears. Now, press GRAPH, or any other menu key. You will be returned to the Home Screen, with the program editor-style menu displayed!
An even weirder thing you can do in the same manner as the last item, is type Input A at the home screen and press ENTER. When the question mark appears, press MODE, and then press GRAPH or another menu key. The program will quit, the program editor-style menu will appear at the Home Screen, and the MODE screen text will be superimposed over the Home Screen, and you can type over it!
The TI-86 is slower than the TI-85. Try running a BASIC program on the TI-85, and the same program on the TI-86, and you'll see. The reason has to do with the extra RAM (128K rather than 32K). The Z80 processor in all the TI-8x calcs can address only 64K at a time. On the TI-85, it could address all 32K at once, and the other 32K was ROM. The calculator had 128K of ROM, though, so 16K of the ROM was paged, so if the calc needed to access a different ROM section, it just flipped the page. The TI-86 does the same thing for its RAM. Because it needs to be flipping the pages all the time, the extra memory management slows down the calculator.
In the Stat Plot editor, if the insert cursor is used to type anything into the List Name= field, then the lines of text on the screen below that field disappear strangely. The cursor can still move there and type, though. Discovered by maestro@cache.cow.net
If the left and down arrow keys are held simultaneously, the calc freezes until they are released.

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