HP calculator is back

If you're talking specifically about the HP, I'll have to yield - I don't remember it well enough.

If you're talking about most extant calculators, including the Windoze XP desktop accessory, the behaviour we described is common.

Steve

I've been using HP Calculators since 1982 when I was first introduced to them (my very first job gave an 11C away as a signing bonus). Still have it, still works. Since then I've collected the whole pioneer series (models 10C, 11C, 12C, 15C, and

Also own the 28S, 28C, the 41CX. The 41CX saw alot of use doing star fixes and construction layout as a surveyor before total stations replaced theodolites and did all the calcs on board. (The current crop of instruments from Nikon/Trimble still run DOS on an 8086)

There's a guy at

The best RPN emulator I've found for windows is Excalibur by David Bernazzani. I've been using version 1.05 for a few years now. It occassionally throws an exception and the layout is a little clunky but it is servicable if you spend a few minutes making a custom layout for the functions you need. You can download it from

Kevin

get

it is

had to

battery for the entire 10 Series (Voyager Series) is a 357 or A76. It's fairly easy to get.

Kevin

Steve, its a reading comprehension issue. you CANNOT take a square root using a combination of X^2 and 1/x buttons (unless of course the number is 1)

try: sqrt(4): 4 [X^2] = 16 [1/X] = 1/16 != 2

Cheers Terry

Isn't INV X^2 == X^0.5 ?

Try to find the HP42S. That's a real nice scientific calculator. Not so big but powerful.

John

Sounds like the HP41C, I had one as well. The batteries eventually leaked and ruined it, although I could have got it 'repaired'. HP used to charge quite a lot of money and replaced them with a new one.

I had one of those. IIRC it cost me =A3209 which was a lot of money in those days. It had all of 128 bytes of user RAM, I plugged in another RAM chip giving me 256 bytes total. Having to hand-assemble code meant that it was rather difficult to develop programs of any size, anyway.

Leon

Sounds like a nice feature. I am partial to algebraic calculators, especially programmable ones. That is the result of my own development, which predated the HPs (1965), visible here:

I found a very simple way of implementing proper precedence and nested parentheses, at least to two levels. This also resulted in economical ways of incrementing and decrementing. To save on keystrokes, parentheses implied multiplication or division. The rules for which were selected were slightly hairy. But in general it gave the expected results.

Ah, I see. The INV key is not 1/x - it inverts the operation, so turning ^2 into ^1/2.

Steve

Hello Chuck,

Cool! Do you know how many were eventually sold? Cash flow issues so early on make me wonder whether the world wasn't ready yet for this stuff. Or maybe it was like Borgward where they loved engineering but sales was kind of a bit foreign.

The design looks nice and I always liked Nixie tubes. What were the pull tabs for on the left side?

It is a reading comprehension issue. The INV button is not the 1/x button. It does not perform the 'reciprocal operation' as in taking the reciprocal of a number (1/x), it performs the inverse of the usual operation assigned to a key. Thus INV x^2 = x^0.5, INV sin(x) = arcsin(x), INV e^x = ln(x).

Tim

Hello Kevin,

Plus they seem indestructible. Weren't these thrown across the room by an HP rep to show how sturdy they are? When an angry CEO did that with his cell phone in a board meeting it died instantly...

And there is probably a very good reason why they remained with DOS ;-)

This is a statement that a lot of engineers need to take to heart.

They were used to label up to eight sub-programs, callable from each other. When the tab was in the programs became read-only. About 100 were built.

Another feature I was proud of: the keys were illuminated, and only valid keys in a particular situation were lit. Invalid keystrokes were ignored.

Since I engineered it, marketing and financing were the problem :-)

Please don't strip attributions for quoted material.

Hello Chuck,

Cool. I wish more would have been built but maybe society wasn't ready for so much high-tech. In those days people used adding machine. Rat-tat-tat-clunk. Lots of paper rolls went through those.

Yeah, engineers aren't the best marketeers. That's why I married one :-)

You mean the names? I'll try but my newsreader cuts much of that. I usually read threads in a consecutive order so I never need any quotes myself. But I guess it's customary on usenet. Being an old DOS guy I have a tendency to be a minimalist when it comes to file size, or in this case message size.

Or just mentally old ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

Hello Jim,

Nope. It's mostly because I married a woman who is a firm believer in not keeping anything that isn't absolutely necessary ;-)

Smart woman; keep *her* at least.

John

Of course... it's never necessary UNTIL AFTER it's thrown out ;-)

...Jim Thompson

I've got a Texas Instruments TI-89 Titanium here, loaded with the free RPN add-on (dunno where I got it, probably ticalc.org). That works pretty nicely, but I'm still getting used to RPN, so it spends most of its time in algebraic mode...

The reprogrammability aspect is neat - I've thrown together a few apps with TIGCC that convert A/D values into real voltages. Makes it a little easier to figure out what your acquisition circuit is up to without faffing around entering the same calculation N-dozen times...

I really should spend a few hours learning TI-BASIC, but entering alphas on the '89 is truly painful. There is an external keyboard available, but (rather helpfully) it's only sold in the USA.

I might look into buying another Palm portable keyboard off eBay and hack together an adapter - the comms protocols for both have been pretty well documented, so converting from one to the other shouldn't be (too) difficult.