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> the higher end models (TI-92 etc) that had symbolic equation solvers were also banned

I'm surprised it was a problem in the first place. Don't equation solving exercises require you to leave intermediary steps, and you can't just put a "x=5" as a one liner answer ?

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We used TI-Nspire CX CAS at my university but it was banned in the first half of the calculus 1 course. It would really make no sense to allow you to bring one to an exam where many questions are one liners, or close to it (eg. "find the derivative of f(x)=7x^5+10"). IIRC, they also banned it in a calc 2 exam. Almost all other courses allowed them and they exams where designed for it (eg. 8 big problems instead of 2).

I don't remember if it was the case for the TI-92+, but some calculators can show the intermediate steps, or at least some of them.

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