Hacker Extraordinaire Gets Windows 10 IoT Core Running on an HP Calculator

If you haven’t been in school for a while, you may not realize that graphing calculators have come a long way since the iconic TI-83 that seemed to persevere for decades — and somehow still manages to. New graphing calculators have features like full-color touchscreens, WiFi capabilities, and a plethora of sophisticated apps. They are, essentially, smartphones with the addition of keyboards full of symbols we haven’t seen since high school. As such, they run operating systems, and Ben was able to get Windows 10 IoT Core running on his HP Prime graphing calculator.

The naming convention is a little confusing, but the Windows 10 IoT line of operating systems are essentially replacements for what Microsoft used to refer to as “Embedded” operating systems. Windows 10 IoT Core, specifically, is a successor to Windows CE, and was developed for the same kinds of applications. Those include set-top boxes, video game systems, and point-of-sale (POS) kiosks. It even runs on ARM-based single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi. It just so happens that the HP Prime graphing calculator contains an ARM9 and an Arm Cortex-A7 processor.

That means that it’s at least theoretically possible to run Windows 10 IoT Core on an HP Prime graphing calculator, and Ben decided to give it a shot. Ben tweeted his progress over the course of a couple days of hacking, starting with the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) you see when the system fails to find anything to boot. He was then able to progress to the recovery boot menu. From there, he accessed the Windows Boot Manager, and, finally, the boot UI. Ben hasn’t posted an update in a couple of days, so it’s not exactly clear if he’s been able to actually reach the Windows 10 IoT Core “desktop.” But his work does seem very promising so far.