TI-84 Garbage Collection

[ultragoregrind]

Hello scene -

Today i ran into an issue attempting to xfer the latest batch of payloads to my ti84 and was presented with a few different and somewhat troubling error messages (access denied, unrecognized command, etc) and the transfer failed.

Long story short, a bit of research and i found a Garbage Collection function within the TI-84, and once i ran it i was able to xfer the payloads as expected.

To get to the Garbage Collection tool:

1. Press [2nd][0] to access (CATALOG)
2. Press [TAN] to jump to first command that starts with G.
3. Find GarbageCollect
4. Press [ENTER][ENTER][2:Yes].

Hope this helps someone else!

Edit: My Theory as to why this came up is it's a result of deleting data and adding new data frequently (i had rm'ed a bunch of the default apps and app vars from my ti84 and added all the payloads i could get my hands on. gotta love options). Seems like a defrag like tool creating continuous free space on the storage.

edit 2: http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~pad/faq/ti83.html#14

What is garbage collecting? Do I need to worry about it wearing out my flash memory?

Garbage collecting refers to reorganizing the flash memory. Each time a new file is placed in flash memory, it is stored after the end of the last file. If a file is removed from flash, it is marked as deleted, but the space it occupied will not be reused immediately. Unlike RAM, which is moved around to have no "gaps" in used space whenever a file is deleted or resized, the flash memory will only be rearranged once it is all full. When this happens, the calculator will ask if you want to garbage collect the memory. Generally you should always choose "Yes" as otherwise the memory access will fail. Unfortunately this process can take a while.

If running assembly programs from a shell, you may need to do this often; in order to save any changes to the data in the program, the shell will normally delete the program and copy the (possibly modified) program back to flash memory after you exit. If you run the program many times, this will "use" all the space in the flash memory, making garbage collection necessary. Some people seem to worry that this will wear out the flash memory, since it requires erasing blocks of it so that they can be written to again, and the memory is only designed to be erasable a limited number of times. However, this probably not a realistic concern, as the flash memory can be erased at least 100,000 times.

[remainnameless]

Hello scene -

Today i ran into an issue attempting to xfer the latest batch of payloads to my ti84 and was presented with a few different and somewhat troubling error messages (access denied, unrecognized command, etc) and the transfer failed.

Long story short, a bit of research and i found a Garbage Collection function within the TI-84, and once i ran it i was able to xfer the payloads as expected.

To get to the Garbage Collection tool:

1. Press [2nd][0] to access (CATALOG)
2. Press [TAN] to jump to first command that starts with G.
3. Find GarbageCollect
4. Press [ENTER][ENTER][2:Yes].

Hope this helps someone else!

Edit: My Theory as to why this came up is it's a result of deleting data and adding new data frequently (i had rm'ed a bunch of the default apps and app vars from my ti84 and added all the payloads i could get my hands on. gotta love options). Seems like a defrag like tool creating continuous free space on the storage.

lol I thought you were making fun of my thread "TI-84 Payload Collection"

Good to know. I will keep a lookout for this error.

[ultragoregrind]

lol I thought you were making fun of my thread "TI-84 Payload Collection"

Good to know. I will keep a lookout for this error.

Nothing of the sort!!!

As my reply says in your thread - your post was very useful and it will be handy to have all that info in a central location.

I'm sorry this function of the ti-84 resulted in a confusing post title

[DJLO]

lol I thought you were making fun of my thread "TI-84 Payload Collection"

Good to know. I will keep a lookout for this error.

LOL i thought the same thing. I was about to rip someone a new one but i realized he is being helpful

[remainnameless]

LOL i thought the same thing. I was about to rip someone a new one but i realized he is being helpful

Hah Thanks for having my back.

You mess with me, you mess with DJLO. lol

[Bv8360]

LOL! i though the same as remainnameless and DJLO! though great post ultragoregrind.

I found this same problem with my TI-84 the other day, i read through many TI-84 forums and found the garbage collection helped. I was trying to add the latest Appvar's so i have all the options e.g. Hermes 4b, PL3 etc. etc. and i received unauthorized errors etc. from the calculator when trying to transfer via TI Connect.

My calculator's not going to tell me if i'm authorised to install new appvar's or not, that's bloody rude!!

[ultragoregrind]

LOL! i though the same as remainnameless and DJLO! though great post ultragoregrind.

I found this same problem with my TI-84 the other day, i read through many TI-84 forums and found the garbage collection helped. I was trying to add the latest Appvar's so i have all the options e.g. Hermes 4b, PL3 etc. etc. and i received unauthorized errors etc. from the calculator when trying to transfer via TI Connect.

My calculator's not going to tell me if i'm authorised to install new appvar's or not, that's bloody rude!!

In my research I found mention that this same error can also be caused by weak batteries in your ti-84. So if Garbage Collection fails to solve the problem, swap the batteries (and vice versa).

[ILLPLEASA]

Thanks! This helped me out tonight.. ;-)

[ultragoregrind]

I am shamelessly self-bumping this. With everyone rushing to add the latest psn payloads - might come in useful to someone

[Palooza5]

Nice post. I would also like to mention that if you're getting a "USB Communication Error: Insufficient Memory" error, you should try using TiConnect to delete some applications archived in Flash. I don't know about you guys, but when I bought my TI-84, it came with a ton of bloatware, so when I went to upload some payloads for PS3JB, it started whining at me. Just thought I'd pass that on.