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Step 3: Diagnosis

So your calculator won't turn on? Here's some information you need to know.

When your calculator boots up after a RAM clear, there are several things it does before giving you the RAM cleared screen. One of the things it does is parsing the archive. It goes through your archive space looking for variables, and when it finds them, it adds their information to something called the VAT (the Variable Allocation Table). This ensures that your calculator can easily find those variables later on.

But now your calculator can't get through this step, which means something went wrong with the parsing. There are two possible causes for this: that your one of the variables in your archive is corrupted, or that your calculator's OS itself is corrupted. Let's see which one it is. Hold CLEAR and press ON, then let go of both keys.

If your calculator turns on (probably landing you on the now so strangly reassuring Ram cleared screen

Basically, the "CLEAR + ON" key combination tells your calculator not to parse the archive. If there's anything in there that's corrupted, this trick prevents it from noticing. If you go into Mem Mgmt/Del…, you'll notice that it lists nothing that was originally in your archive, with the exception of flash apps. Don't worry; your other variables are still there, but they're hidden from view. At least one of them must be corrupted. Now go on to step 5, but do not do anything that modifies the archive.

• Don't run GarbageCollect. That clears out all those "hidden" variables.
• Don't archive a variable. If you do, you run the risk of overwriting one of those "hidden" variables.
• Don't run any program or app that modifies the archive. This includes MirageOS, which archives an appvar called MirageOS containing information about the app.

If your calculator still doesn't turn on

Unfortunately, that probably means your OS got corrupted. Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds (and if you're not sure, just look back to step 1. Read on to step 4 when you're ready.