The new HP35 is a sad parody of the beautiful original. The display is awful. It's so overloaded with features that you'll never use that the basic functions are obscured. Not recommended.
Somebody should make a true HP35 clone. They'd sell jillions of them.
John
I think it's mainly overloaded with *memory* you'll never use. And poor implementations of some features, such as how they handle bin/hex/oct/dec -- clearly implemented by someone who wasn't actually familiar with how people use such a feature.
BTW, the 35s is also filled with bugs. Most are minor, but some are not. See:
HP has never acknowledged -- much less fixed -- any of these problems. Not at all like the original HP 35:
"The HP-35 had numerical algorithms that exceeded the precision of most mainframe computers at the time. During development, Dave Cochran, who was in charge of the algorithms, tried to use a Burroughs B5500 to validate the results of the HP-35 but instead found too little precision in the former to continue. IBM mainframes also didn't measure up. This forced time-consuming manual comparisons of results to mathematical tables. A few bugs got through this process. For example: 2.02 ln ex resulted in 2 rather than 2.02. When the bug was discovered, HP had already sold 25,000 units which was a huge volume for the company. In a meeting, Dave Packard asked what they were going to do about the units already in the field and someone in the crowd said "Don't tell?" At this Packard's pencil snapped and he said: "Who said that? We're going to tell everyone and offer them, a replacement. It would be better to never make a dime of profit than to have a product out there with a problem". It turns out that less than a quarter of the units were returned. Most people preferred to keep their buggy calculator and the notice from HP offering the replacement."
The HP 35s probably would have been better if the calculator division had ended up with test & measurement guys (Agilent), but who knows? A lot of the problem is what you've said yourself -- "the culture of 'all software has bugs' is self-fulfilling."
---Joel
This is one machine that has the right customer base for an open-source hardware and software solution.
Done right you could even have room for various vendors to provide hardware at various price/performance/quality/looks levels. Just make sure that the code is downloadable -- then let the fur fly.
-- www.wescottdesign.com
...cost me a month's pay as a brand new engineer back in '68 and worth every dime of it. I could do in an hour what it took me a day to do with log and trig tables.
Jim
"RST Engineering"
** Errr - the first HP35 was not available until 1972.** Should have tried using a well lubricated slide rule.
.... Phil
They should offer the HP11C again. Best invention since pivot irrigation. A while ago Costco sold HP12C re-makes as a HP anniversary edition but those are more for the MBA types.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
The latest HP 12Cs actually run a 32-bit ARM CPU that emulates the old 4-bit Saturn CPU used in the original calculator (and no longer available in silicon). Amazing!
Good thing. He did have that 4 year backlog of work ('68-'72) to catch up with while waiting for it. ;-)
-- Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fast wine, loose cars, old women.
-- I\'ve got an HP15C that I bought about 30 years ago, use it every day, and I\'m on my third set of battery cells. Amazing, beautiful piece of work. JF
I agree with everything other than "not recommended". It's no match for the original (or even the superior HP45) but it's still the best calculator out there.
The firmware is available.
A month's pay in '68? It came out in '72. Even in '68 $400/month was pretty crappy pay.
My HP45 did cost me more than a month's pay (I was in college). Actually, I used a student loan to buy it.
But we'll have to see if they can match the 10+ year battery runtime of their grandpa.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
It's odds-on HP will re-release the 15C. They have the hardware platform in the current 12C model with the ARM processor which runs a simulation of the original 12C ROM code, and the LCD is the same as the 12C, so all they need do is drop in the 15C (or 11C) ROM code, add new key legends, and print a new manual. Hey presto - a new 15C, or 11C, or 16C. In fact a working 15C prototype has been shown at a conference. HP have also done targeted market research into re-introduction of classic calcs some time ago, and it was fairly obvious the research was biased toward a (Voyager) 15C/11C answer. It has been much discussed over at the MOHPC forum for quite some time.
Dave.
-- ================================================ Check out my Electronics Engineering Video Blog & Podcast: http://www.eevblog.com
I hope they don't screw it like they did with the new 20B ARM platform by running it at full speed for all calculations:
My uWatch does calculations splendidly at only 32KHz.
Dave.
-- ================================================ Check out my Electronics Engineering Video Blog & Podcast: http://www.eevblog.com
Good point in your video there, Dave, and I expect you're correct that the internal resistance of the battery wasn't considered. I'm thinking that an L-C filter could "fix" a lot of this, though -- most calcuations would be fast enough that the bulk of the power would come from the capacitor, and the the battery would recharge the cap at a rate throttled by the inductor. A big enough/low enough loss inductor might not be practical, so perhaps some micropower op-amp design that current limits the battery output until the cap voltages starts to drop to precarious levles?
---Joel
Although, come to think of it, even at 30mA you're dissipating upwards of 90mW in the CPU so 1.7mW being dissipated in the battery's internal resistance is still under 2% of the total power consumption... perhaps not worth worrying about!
If my 35 wasn't so valuable and hard-to-replace, I'd use it every day.
The 35S isn't a bad all-around calculator, and if you love RPN (who doesn't?) then it's the best "simple" scientific contemporary calc (imho). However, I still prefer using my 32SII. I'm glad I've got two of them.
Bob
-- == All google group posts are automatically deleted due to spam ==
The best calculators are older HPs, from ebay.
John
The CPU is only taking around 45mW @ 30MHz (3V x 15mA) (@0.5mA/MHz) So the IR loss is closer to 4%. But that's best case, and that will get worse with battery aging and brand of battery. Some can argue that it's not much, but good calculator design is all about power efficiency and optimal design.
Dave.
-- ================================================ Check out my Electronics Engineering Video Blog & Podcast: http://www.eevblog.com
Most of them are getting pretty flaky, after 35 years. I'd use my HP45 but I can't keep it powered on. Crapping out in the middle of a calculation isn't nice.
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