Software
TI-59 Software Collection
Programs written for real TI-59, TI-58 and TI-58C hardware, from the 1978 52-Notes calendar competition to TI PPC club printer-graphics tricks and factory diagnostics — collected here as loadable preset files, whether or not you have Calc-U 59 installed yet.
Each entry below is a .ti59, .ti58 or .ti58c preset file — the calculator's program, registers and (where the original used one) magnetic-card cue card, ready to load. Programs marked Requires printer need the emulated PC-100/PC-100C — available in the full app, not the browser emulator below.
Get Calc-U 59 for Mac or for iPhone and iPad, then open a downloaded file, or try the browser emulator first — it has no printer, but the utilities below that don't need one will run.
The 1978 calendar printer competition
“52-Notes,” the TI programmable-calculator newsletter, ran a running competition through 1978 to write the fastest TI-59 program that prints a full year calendar on the PC-100 printer, using the Master Library module's date routines. Each entry improved on the last — all seven surviving programs are collected here, PC-100/PC-100C printer required.
Calendar Printer — Jared Weinberger
Download calendar-01-Weinberger.ti59The opening entry in the competition (52-Notes V3N5).
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
Calendar Printer — Lou Cargile
Download calendar-02-cargile.ti59A second V3N5 entry, Lou Cargile's first attempt at the calendar problem.
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
Calendar Printer — Richard Vanderburgh
Download calendar-03-vanderburgh.ti59A third V3N5 entry, checking for the ML module and warning the user if it's missing.
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
Calendar Printer — Bill Skillman
Download calendar-04-skillman.ti59V3N6: a faster print-buffer packing approach, down to about 7½ minutes per year.
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
Calendar Printer — Richard Vanderburgh (revised)
Download calendar-05-vanderburgh.ti59V3N6: Vanderburgh folds in Panos Galidas' doubled print-code method and further tightens it, to about 5½ minutes per year.
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
Calendar Printer — Lou Cargile (bugfix)
Download calendar-06-cargile.ti59V3N6: a correction to an earlier entry — a missing CLR' meant the 1st of a month could fail to print if it fell on a Thursday.
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
Calendar Printer — Panos Galidas
Download calendar-07-calidas.ti59V3N7: the fastest of the series, averaging 2 minutes 38.6 seconds per year over a five-year test span.
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
PC-100 printer graphics and tricks
The PC-100/PC-100C thermal printer had an undocumented quirk: interrupting it mid-character exposes partial print heads, which the TI PPC user community turned into a small genre of printer-graphics demos through the early 1980s.
Print character table
Download characters.ti59Prints the full TI-59 print-code table with row and column headers.
Print characters in Fast Mode
Download characters-fastmode.ti59K-J Meusch's version of the character table, using Fast Mode to print far faster than normal execution (TI PPC Notes V5N9-10, 1980).
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
Fast-Grafik 3-D Plot — Part 1
Download fast-grafik-3d-plot-part1.ti59Peter Poloczek's 3-D surface plotter for the PC-100, built on the printer-interrupt trick (TI PPC Notes V8N2, 1983). Load Part 2 after this one finishes, without resetting.
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
Fast-Grafik 3-D Plot — Part 2
Download fast-grafik-3d-plot-part2.ti59The second half of Poloczek's 3-D plotter. Requires Part 1 to have already run in the same session.
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
Printer interrupt character table
Download printer-quirks.ti59Dave Leising's print-code table showing each character both normally and interrupted mid-print (PPX Exchange, March/April 1982).
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
Stars & Stripes
Download stars-and-stripes.ti59Richard Snow's demonstration of PC-100 graphics capability, drawing a flag using the printer-interrupt technique (TI PPC Notes V6N4-5, 1981).
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
“TI” logo — high-resolution printer graphics
Download texas-print.ti59Frank Dever's high-resolution “TI” logo (PPX Exchange, March/April 1982). The program corrupts a program-step keycode on purpose to redirect the ROM's dispatcher mid-instruction — the file's header traces exactly which ROM address that lands on.
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
Printer trace-mode quirk
Download trace-quirk.ti59A keystroke sequence, found by a TI PPC club member, that puts a TI-58 or TI-59 into an undocumented trace mode once a printer is attached (TI PPC Notes V6N4-5, 1981).
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
Diagnostics and self-tests
Factory-style diagnostics for checking whether a TI-59 or TI-58 is healthy — useful background if you're troubleshooting real hardware, and a good stress test for the emulation core.
TI-59 calculator diagnostic
Download diag.ti59The magnetic-card diagnostic Texas Instruments documented in the owner's manual, both card sides. Prints and displays “−.8888888888” when everything checks out.
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
TI-58 calculator diagnostic
Download diag.ti58The same diagnostic, resized to fit the TI-58's smaller memory partition.
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
RAM test
Download ram_test.ti59A roughly three-minute test of all data registers that prints “598-TEST-1” and reports the default memory partition; faulty registers are called out by address.
Full RAM test (Fast Mode)
Download ram_test_full_fast.ti59George Thomson's test of all 100 data registers using indirect addressing and the STF fast-mode trick, printing any mismatch on the PC-100A/PC-100C (TI PPC Notes V9N5, 1985).
Requires the PC-100/PC-100C printer.
TI-58C repartitioning reference
Download repartition.ti58cKeystroke notes on how the TI-58C's constant-memory feature stores the partition setting, and how to reach the extra 32 steps (480–511) that are otherwise keyboard-only (TI PPC Notes V5N7, 1980).
Fast Mode, keycodes and firmware curiosities
Fast Mode is an undocumented TI-58/TI-58C/TI-59 execution mode, discovered and written up by the TI PPC club over several years — these programs demonstrate it, along with a couple of other undocumented corners of the ROM.
Fast Mode factorial demo (TI-59)
Download fastmode.ti59Computes factorials in both normal and Fast Mode so the roughly 70% speed difference is directly comparable — 10! in about 4.6 seconds, 69! in about 31.
Fast Mode factorial demo (TI-58)
Download fastmode.ti58The same Fast Mode factorial comparison, for the TI-58/TI-58C.
Fast Mode zero-padding bug
Download FastMode_Zero4.ti59A mistyped Fast Mode program — one leading zero short of the documented five — that puts a real TI-59 into an unusual, reproducible misbehaving state. Kept as a regression case; it also uncovered a display-refresh bug in the emulator, fixed before v1.0.0.
Firmware listing keystroke sequence
Download firmware.ti59An unusual keyboard sequence, originally described by TI PPC Notes editor Maurice Swinnen, that puts the TI-59 into a mode where the ROM firmware itself can be listed.
Print all keycodes
Download keycodes.ti59Jared Weinberger's routine for generating and printing every TI-59 key code, using dynamic program-code modification (TI PPC Notes V5N4-5, 1980).
Utilities
Small, self-contained programs that aren't tied to a particular magazine series.
Integer base conversion
Download Integer-Base-Conversion.ti59Converts an integer between arbitrary number bases — hex to binary to decimal and back — originally published in Computer Design magazine, 1980.
Frequency transformation
Download Frequency-Transformation.ti59A filter-design program that transforms a normalized low-pass filter's cutoff frequencies, from the Artech House discrete-time filter design tables.
Sum of N numbers
Download sum.ti59A deliberately simple program — sums N down to 1 — useful as a stopwatch for comparing execution speed across devices running the emulator.
CPU-level assembly examples
These target the TMC0501 CPU inside the calculator directly, as raw opcodes rather than a keystroke program, loaded through the app's Debug panel ASM Overlay. They only run in the native Mac/iPhone/iPad app, not the browser emulator below.
Simple counter
Download simple_count.asmThe smallest useful ASM overlay example: increments a counter on the display in a tight loop, about 1185 times a second.
Stopwatch
Download stopwatch.asmA precisely timed stopwatch built on the WAIT Dn instruction rather than counting cycles — 222 increments per second, 4.5011 ms each.
Decimal-point / LED afterglow test
Download DPT.asmCycles the decimal-point-and-comma nibble across every digit position, demonstrating the emulator's simulated LED afterglow.
7-segment decoder edge case (known non-working)
Download Decoder.asmA real-hardware timing edge case — a phase-shifted WAIT before SET IDLE exposes all 16 hex segment patterns on real silicon. Documented here for the CPU-emulation detail, but it does not reproduce on Calc-U 59: the emulator's display is a phase-independent snapshot, so the timing quirk this program depends on has nothing to act on.
Source and format
These files are maintained in the examples/ directory of the Calc-U 59 repository — its name predates this collection outgrowing "examples" — together with a few internal debugging and screenshot-test files not listed here. The preset file format is documented if you want to write your own — the tutorial walks through building one from scratch — and the debugger's ASM Overlay is documented for the assembly examples above.
Most of these programs were originally published in 52-Notes, TI PPC Notes and PPX Exchange — the newsletters of the TI Programmable Calculator user community in the late 1970s and early 1980s — or on the HP Museum forum, where TI material is also archived and discussed.