Non-Scientific Survey of Scientific Calculators

use regularly : HP15C have also : HP41C ( resurrected , dumpster diving at LBL !) old HP25 (plain , no C) , gave up the ghost long time ago...

Jure Z.

I have an old sharp el-9300c, TI-83+ and TI-86.

I use the TI-86 all the time, when it is misplaced, I fall back on the ti-83 ...

JS

Somehow I'm missing the beginning of this thread, but...

For day-to-day use I started with an HP-32S II, then went to the 33s, and now the 35s... although I've been trying to get around to changing over to an HP 50g given the bugs present in the 35s. (I used an HP-48SX and then GX throughput college to very good effect, and while the 50g is not exactly the same level of quality that those machines were, it does have all their capabilities and more).

For Phil Hobbs: PPC is still alive and well

Jake Schwarz scanned in a bunch of the back issues of their newsletter, "Datafile" and sells copies on CD here: . Any chance you were the author of some of those old articles?

---Joel

Joel,

Thanks--those guys look just as nuts now as they were back then. I did a bunch of synthetic programming--I still have the PPC ROM plug-in, and still have the green Wickes synthetic programming book in my office, but haven't looked at it in years. I didn't write any of those articles, but I did subscribe to the newsletter. I remember writing part of an article on mapping all the synthetic instructions for audio tones, but never got it finished.

My interest in calculator programming then was the same as in C++ programming now--namely that I don't have to worry about my own code going away, and because it's done in my own idiosyncratic style, I can easily figure out how to use it years later. (I've sometimes coded with other people, but not usually.)

Thanks for the blast from the past.

For all the non-PPC folk: synthetic programming originally came about due to a crappy power-on reset circuit in the HP-67 and HP-41C. If you took out the battery very briefly, the program memory would come up full of garbage. It turned out that most of it consisted of valid but undocumented opcodes, which you could edit and store on magnetic cards. Once a clever guy figured out how to bootstrap those opcodes, so you could actually program them, the whole synthetic programming thing took off. It was really never much more than a toy, but it was great fun. Calculator programming is a weird combination of assembly and HLL programming--very good for early training for embedded systems, too.

It was pretty cool having 1000 program steps and 100 registers to play with, back in 1979, as well as magnetic storage--I was schlepping punch card decks in 1979, though that was mostly for fun as well.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Indeed. I had an HP-28S way-back-when that had no means of accepting input from the outside world other than via the keyboard (i.e., no serial port, etc.), and I remember typing in the "magic" strings to enter a "poke" and "peek" program. HP gave you a SYSEVAL function (i.e., execute the machine code at this location), but no poke or peek! Hence you started with a memory-cleared machine and stored, e.g., "LKJS84LKJSDVNM238UERD#$%LKJSWERLKJ345" or somesuch into a variable. Since it was the first variable stored, someone had figured out where it memory it ended up and you then did a SYSEVAL to create a PEEK and POKE function... at which point life became a lot easier, of course.

Since the magic strings could only contain keyboard-enterable characters, it restricted which op-codes you could end... but since it was just a bootstrap anyway, it wasn't a drawback.

---Joel

Xcalc is exactly what I've been looking for to replace the built-in XP calculator. I've been wanting something which would allow me to set decimal places and/or set engineering notation as well as handling complex numbers.

Thanks for the link.

John

The one that came with the computer. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Uh huh... :) I've used Windows calculator many times when my calculator disappears. (Buried under schematics, doodles and documents.) Windows calculator + touch screen would be nice.

D from BC British Columbia Canada.

You need an "always on top" z-axis option for your calculator. :-)

--
John

My all-time favorite was the HP-11C. I used mine for years, until I wore it out.

I've been hoping that HP would re-issue that one like they have with it's financial brother, the HP-15C. I'd love to have another one. No luck, though.

(I'm now using a TI-89.)

--
The financial calculator you\'re thinking about was/is the HP 12c:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/215348-215348-64232-20036-215349-3177377.html

The HP-15C was, according to the owner\'s handbook, an "Advanced
Programmable Scientific Calculator"

I think all of these HP calculators are available on eBay. Not new ones, of course, but a pretty good selection of used ones. Not cheap though. It seems everybody wants one.

I came up on the financial side - the HP-80, then the 38E and 38C, and finally the 12C, which is still manufactured I think. I still use the 38C as my regular calculator. I love RPN, and don't do well anymore with algebraic calculators anymore.

Also, it's not as convenient, but I think most of these HP calculators can be found as emulator software. On the early ones, they even emulate the original binary-coded decimal, so even the rounding and truncating is exactly the same.

Oops! Right you are!

It's called get a tablet/laptop.

Snow banks?

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

New Operating System.

It's called "Squeegee"

I have a few straight scientific handhelds... A TI, a Casio. No programmable handhelds.

MatLab or Excel, or the windows or Linux calculator flavor of the month.

Are you sure you had LCD in '74? I don't think so.

My first was the Commodore SR4120D.

It used about 150mA with a single 1 in both memories and the mantissa, and it used about 650mA with all 8s in the memories and mantissa. Battery life new was about 4 hours... after it aged a bit I only got about 2.5 to 3 hrs out of each charge. Great sci calc though! Has statistical functions and a couple other nifty "features".

I am using the MK-61 with the factory date of 05.85. This is a programmable RPN machine. The size is 75 x 165 x 30 mm. The cost of this calculator was 86 rubles, which was about 1/2 of the monthly salary of the senior engineer.

Inside there are several P-MOS ICs with the 4-phase 27V serial architecture and a voltage convertor made of discrete components. The display is vacuum fluorescent. The power is 3 x AA which last about 5 hours.

The manual includes the schematics and the accuracy specs for the all functions. I haven't seen the accuracy specified for any other calculator.

Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant

About 1972 (when I was 12) my dad bought a 4-banger Bowmar with 8 nice bright LED digits..for probably $400. I remember being amazed. It had really nice clicky buttons, too.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs