These devices were the equivalent of a smartphone in the 90&#x27;s in a lot of ways.<p>I had a TI-85 in High School.  Was the first calc to have a link cable to connect 2 calculators.  Also had assembly programming capability thanks to an oversight that couldn&#x27;t be taken away.  This opened the door for things like doom, tetris and other games.<p>Got to build a serial port cable interface by cutting my wire in half, external storage devices for it, custom software.<p>Highlight for me was the programmability of it to write software for my high school courses, including math and chemistry formula sheet software.  Calculus had to be done by hand but I had an app for testing various elements.<p>This type of development gave me a much deeper insight and grasp of math, formulas and how things worked and could be manipulated.<p>Surprisingly, teachers let me use my school apps on the tests because I built them myself and it needed an understanding of the concepts to build the software, and if I was going to risk my high school graduation on it, it was up to me.<p>It&#x27;s kind of sad how much we could get done with constraints of limited hardware, and today&#x27;s smart devices are making people less empowered by chasing novelty and distraction instead of solving their own problems.