Calculators

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
Don't forget the HP-16C "Computer Scientist" calculator
I bought it in 1985.
I still use it.
Replaced the batteries last year.
HP16C.jpg
 
The HPs will always be my favorites, but when it comes to cheap calculators for the machine shop and such, Sharp makes some pretty good ones. Not as sleek as the old EL-507, but the recent EL-506W is nice. I picked up one of the popular TI calculators they sell in the office stores for students, and hate it. Math is hard enough for students without an annoying calculator. They seem to have the market sewn up, as the Sharps have to be mail ordered around here.
 
this is the plug-in end of the HP-41 -- as I said, it is my second, being a HP-41CX -- I used the securities and financial pak back when everyone's idea of a personal computer was an Apple II+ with 48k of memory -- you could price CBOE options in seconds.

it would take hours to do a simple network analysis with the circuits pak. i had the statistics pak at one time but found that all i really needed was pretty simple.

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


my first electronic calculator was a Bowmar -- it used to give wrong answers when the batteries ran low.
 
Oh yeah! I did quite a lot of programming on one of those, and they have the worst feeling keyboard of all time. OTOH, they're a pretty good machine for little control and lab applications. About two years or so ago I ditched one or two on the surplus market for cheap, including the memory, gpib, and manuals. Several people showed up later quite upset, as they're collectible, and sometimes sell for far more than IMO, they're worth.

BTW, on that photo above, I notice that you don't have the fame, fortune, or hot babes plug-in modules. If you ever get those, remember not to install the second two at the same time. They're not compatible, and will crash the unit.
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
The 1st calculator i ever used was some big HP my dad brought home from work (HP45 mentioned above? cost & timing would be right). My 1st one was an HP25c, but left that in an ex's glovebox. I then got an HP11, but killed it, i now have an HP30-something that probably needs new batteries. I had an HP 12 emulator under OS9 and now use FreeRPN. The built-in OS X calc can be switched to RPN, but the stacks don't work quite right.

That last link to the HP67 emulator is much appreciated.

PA... maybe Apple's Java interpreter works better?

dave
 
I spent some of my first month's full-time salary on a Sinclair Cambridge Programmable, the first programmable calc at an affordable price in the UK.

RPN, tiny LED display, some severe flaws in the number-crunching algorithms, and a 'software library' consisting of four books of program listings, each of which had to be manually entered each time it was required, due to the lack of non-volatile memory of any sort. Any kind of serious use saw a battery life of about half an hour.

It did, however, teach me the rudimentary principles of programming, and I had gained a working knowledge of BASIC by the time I bought a ZX81 a few years later.
 
jackinnj said:
Conrad -- remember this one from 1980? I used to play with one at the McGraw Hill bookstore on Avenue of the Americas -- i believe it cost around 2 grand at the time -- the next lower rung was the HP-67 (a few years before the HP-41)

hp85_4_1.jpg

I loved that machine.
Got it to print off families of exact scale drawings of wing profiles for my winged single seater race car. Built the wing from one of those profiles.
I have never found a later machine that could achieve this scale drawing thing.
I still have the little booklet of profiles.
And all that from 16kB of RAM and no HDD.
The operating system was before DOS since it had no discs. Some version of basic was used for writing the programmes, we didn't buy any software, we developed all our primative uses in house.
 
Hi,
I wish I could show you a pic of the Sinclair calculator using reverse Polish notation. I think I bought in in '69 or '70, but lack of memory is not just the calculator's problem.

Clive Sinclair alledgedly reprogrammed a washing machine chip to get his little gem to work.
 
I got hooked on RPN calculators when I started college back in '76. Wanted on of the HP calculator but they were out of my limited budget. Found this calculator at a local store on sale for $35.00.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


This calculator was from the consumer products division of National Instruments. It did all the basics and had a stack of 4 registers. They also sold a model called the Mathematician that only had 3 registers in the stack. The calculator is long gone but the manual is still in the library.

I'm using a HP48G+ now. After so many years of RPN using a algebraic calculator generally results in frustration. Keep trying to stuff numbers in nonexistent registers...
 
I used an HP-45 through college until the battery connection went bad. Since then I have bought a few old HP calcs on ebay including HP-67, HP-41C and HP41CX along with the modules that you can load into the 41 calculators. I guess I am hooked on RPN. I still used an HP-12C in the lab.
 
I too prefer the HP RPN calculators. I still use my HP 41CV out in the shop. I have a couple HP calculator apps on the iPod that are very nicely done as well. Some are even from HP directly.

For the real retro, you need the analog computer.

chair.jpg


The top one is even a tube type, a "portable" Donner.
 
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.