Given the choice only one meter to take with me in the field, it would be my Simpson 260. It has been in wheat fields all over the Northwest and Canada when working on irrigation machines. It has pulled my butt out of the fire many times.
General Radio 1531A StroboTac?
I have one at home and one at work. Vacuum tube based, if cared for properl y they simply will not die!
Steve
rly they simply will not die!
Holy Cow, Still in production:
Steve
Am 01.08.2018 um 00:34 schrieb Phil Hobbs:
I had and still have one of the first HP-35, it could do sines and other miracles. The father of a class mate ordered them for us, he worked for Brown, Boverie & Cie. They were not yet available on the open market. I also still have an HP-41.
But what I really use daily is Go41C on my Android cell phone.
cheers, Gerhard
I have a 92A, but it reads about 3 dB low. I rely on HP 3400Aa and 3403As.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
All I could afford was a Sinclair Scientific :(
I've just bought an HP35 as a reminder of the only HP35 I was able to use: it was bolted to a desk in the university library.
It was clearly the first owner's pride and joy, since it is in a custom-made hardwood box. Apparently he worked at Rolls Royce and had it for 30 years, since new.
I cleaned the switch contacts, replaced the plastic film stopping dust getting into the keys, and it still works.
Does it have the "exp bug"? 2.02 ln e^x gives 2, not 2.02
I use an HP15 emulator in linux, or an HP32
I use wcalc in a terminal in Linux, or wcalc -EE
Or if it really gets complictiatiated (almost never) octave
Mathlab was free for raspberri pi, have that too somewhere.
units is also a handy command line program in Linux. ~# units
1948 units, 71 prefixes, 28 functions You have: apples Unknown unit 'apples' You have: 10 miles You want: km * 16.09344 / 0.062137119And gnuplot to display data, all together now: http://217.120.43.67/nuclear/a_run_50_outside_2728000.gif :-)
The 35 was my favorite calculator. Not programmable, thank goodness.
The keys were wonderful, and pi is in plain sight. No shifting/dual-use of keys, no goofy internal states. The display scaling seems to always be right.
The power switches were flakey.
Somebody should make a modern clone.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
At Tulane, we weren't allowed to use electronic calculators in tests, because that gave an unfair advantage to rich kids.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
Was that the six-digit one?
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
This one:
Quirky? Sure!
Note that the ROM held 320 instructions, and Nigel Searle managed to keyboard, display, arithmetic and transcendental functions into those 320 instructions. Not much accuracy, but hey, it only cost 10% of the HP35's price!
Just so. I've tried using programmable calculators, and always gone back to using some form of computer program.
The on/off switch isn't protected by the plastic film that protects the keys.
My on/off switch definitely needed cleaning with IPA, and I've added a smear of silicone grease.
They've done that with some of the other calculators; they seem to have an "S" suffix.
The first time I was allowed to use a calculator was in the first year university exams. For most questions a calculator wasn't needed, but for one it was. A significant number of students didn't recognise that and so got wrong answers. Tee hee.
The question was something simple related to the voltages at the nodes of an inverting opamp circuit.
In that vein, Prof Eric Laithwaite at Imperial College always set final exams with - one easy question that could be answered by anyone that had turned up to the lectures. That was sufficient for a pass mark - several questions where average students would get partial answers and get mediocre degrees, and good students could demonstrate their competence, and gain first class honours - one question that couldn't be adequately answered in the available time, and should be avoided
He expected his students to be able to distinguish which topics to avoid.
I wonder if that is even conceivable nowadays.
Fast oscilloscopes have made a lot of old RF instruments obsolete.
The Boonton 72x capacitance meters are wonderful. My 72B has a 1 pF full-scale range.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
There was a "modern" version of the HP35, but it was junk.
I have a bunch of 32SII's which are too complex but OK.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Forcing them to think? Probably not.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Up to a point. Scopes typically have ENOBs between 6 and 8, so if you use a scale that gets you a decent crest factor like 10, there aren't a lot of bits left for the actual measurement. My HP 89441A is 14-bits iirc, which is a lot better.
Mine are the 3-1/2 digit ones, 2-2000 pF FS.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
Me too, at least once I had a computer. Between 1975 and 1984, I did a lot of calculator programming.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.