Blood and stomach pills
Blimey, you are only the second person I have ever heard using that term.
Am I going to be the first to claim the geek kudos of loving an RPN calulator?
Only if you discount the HP41 and HP32 mentioned earlier in the thread....
There was an HP32 emulator on android years ago, but can't find it now.
Swiss Micro v lovely, but spendy
If anyone is hankering after some RPN calculation action then you can try this app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.efalk.rpncalc
I still use RPN. I have, and use most days, EMU48 emulator on my phone (which emulates an HP48. After many years of using HP calculators is just find it easier and quicker. I also have a real HP48 but the phone is easier to carry.
Peak STW?
Who uses calculators these days?
If the question was, what is your favourite calculator app, then I'd go with wcalc a command line one. Much more direct than a calculator app that's pretending to look like a real-life calculator with buttons and stuff.
But that's not the question, so igmc.
PS I hate RPN.
I had an HP48GX for years, and then a 49. Eventually sold the 48 a few years back because I just didn't use it any more.
HP48 was amazing for its time. I wrote a a couple of simple games on it.
In the same spirit as the OP....
Made a simple slide rule when I was about 10 following instructions from a book I'd found in the library. Had no idea how or why it worked, but found it fascinating, so much so that I asked for one for my birthday, a Faber Castell which I've still got today, over 50 years later. Loved looking at the functions on it, and trying to discover what they were for, but many of them I wouldn't understand til years later.
My first calculator was an HP33E, loved the style, the feel of the keys when you depressed them, the colour scheme, red display and the impenetrable acronyms on the keys. And of course, RPN. Think I was about 16 when I bought it, using a summer jobs savings. It came wth an application programming handbook with the keystrokes to program some applications- most of the stuff was to do with interest rate calcs, if I remember, but there was a program to calculate biorhythms, and best of all a simulator to land a rocket on the moon. Which was nothing like you're probably imagining.
I worked for a while in the 80's in a lab which still had an Anita calculator with a Nixie cold cathode display for general usage- I reckon the director must have kept it as some sort of a anti-fashion statement- each place in the display had a set of 10 layered tubes formed in the shape of the digits 0-9, and the appropriate ones were lit. I'm sure others have described the display better than I, but I'd never seen or heard of them until I worked there.
The Casio fx-502p I used for my O-levels. I was such a geek that I wrote a programme to solve quadratic equations that somehow fitted into 256 steps.
I still have it somewhere but wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to start these days.
CASIIO fx-992s
Still going strong after 35 years. Use it every work day.
I especially like the function where you can just SHIFT + to perform basic Pythagoras..
As in working out the hippopotamus of a triangle using 2 sides is just (a) SHIFT + (b) = , rather than have to work out the square root of (a²+b²). 5 button presses instead of 11. Handy in the field when making sure things are set out perpendicular to each other 😉
best of all a simulator to land a rocket on the moon.
And wasn't there one about cosines and cable cars or something?
Similar to @Cougar butI had the fx-450 back in the day. Binary<->Hex<->Decimal conversion indispensible at times. Also the handy constants for when you needed a bit more precision than 3x10^8 or 6x10^-34.
I recently gave that to charity as I got one that has bigger keys and works better in my dim study - Casio fx-83GTX.
Still envy my son's Casio fx-991EX-S-UH as it looks very cool. Too much calculator for me.
FX85MS here, also have a very battered FX82LB that needs new batteries by the look of it. They both do actually, the 85 will get a new one soon as its really struggling.
EDIT: Christ, just opened the 82, it looks like something from the Expanse in there.
I was going to say my Casio fx-451, but I see that’s already got an honourable mention. Bought mine when I started university, so October 1985, and it’s still in daily use - I’m a bit wary of folding it these days, so it stays on the desk rather than going in a pocket. As I recall, it cost £18, which was the same as a week's rent in a student bed sit (in London).
got to be a casio, fx115s vpam (circa 1995), including folding/clip top cover, such a neat package got me through alevels/uni and accounting exams , was dissapointed that it didnt turn on , but i've tried again in daylight and the two way power has turned it on, not switched the battery yet
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It'll need the cell replaced, my 85 is an Lr44, if you don't have any SR44 are seemingly superior but half a volt higher so check first.
Casio FX-991 took me through A-Levels and saved me during a further linear algebra exam at university.
Was looking at them in WH Smith last week, in fact. You get a lot of technology for your money now.
Another vote for the fx-100
http://www.arithmomuseum.com/album.php?cat=c&id=250&lang=en
Thanks OP, you've just made me realise I have a favourite calculator, ffs! So STW...
If anyone can work out why
Is it something to do with polish? Edit: too late
I had an HP 12C from 1990. It never got nicked off my desk because no one else could understand the logic. I knew I was getting old when a I realised the new recruit sent round to sit with me for a day's experience was younger than the calculator.
Come the zombie apocalypse/massive solar flare/EMP strike how are you going to write 5318008 on your HP's and Casio's?
(casing removed for cleaning/lubing)
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@lorax - thanks for posting that; my O, AO & A levels were assisted by the next model, the FX-602. HP ownership levels was similar to that of being left-handed, and I always liked the HP voyagers, more for the landscape orientation.
When I will the lottery I’m going to buy a Curta:
Yep - a Curta is hopefully one day my ultimate boot sale find.
Until then.
https://curta.org/emulators/
When I was a student (a long long time ago) a blind mate of mine had a braille mechanical calculator. It was an extraordinary piece of kit and incredibly fast.
@drlex - what luxury, 512 programmable steps!
My Acorn System 1 had 1k of RAM, but given that it only had a hex keyboard, an 8 digit display, and a hopeless system for recording onto cassettes it was quite a challenge to fill it up...
That is the first time I've seen an acorn system 1, it looks like a tough nut to program with that onboard keyboard.
Is it something to do with polish? Edit: too late
I solved the anagram in 0.68 seconds but it took me practically an eternity to associate the similie 🙂
I went down a rabbit hole of collecting Hewlett Packard calculators a few years ago.
Still have a few including the 48G plus a Swiss Micros DM42.
i use one every day and can’t remember how to use a non-RPN calculator it’s so ingrained!