My Sharp EL-5813, which I first acquired in 1981 (I think) is still in my desk drawer, and working fine. The most remarkable thing about this particular gadget (aside from the fact that its still working at all) is that in 37 years I have only had to replace the batteries twice.
The Casio AL-1000
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Re: The Casio AL-1000
#12Re: The Casio AL-1000
#13That nixie tube driver board is incredibly sexy. I wonder what those black ... block(?)-type chips are? The caption mentions they're 6-pin, but I can't make out any markings on them.
Re: The Casio AL-1000
#14My Sharp EL-5813, which I first acquired in 1981 (I think) is still in my desk drawer, and working fine. The most remarkable thing about this particular gadget (aside from the fact that its still working at all) is that in 37 years I have only had to replace the batteries twice.
Do you happen to remember how much you bought it for?
Just wondering if it was much more expensive (inflation-adjusted) than a modern one. As there are claims that products these day are made less durable in exchange for being more affordable/accessible.
Re: The Casio AL-1000
#15$900 in 1967 is equivalent to $6,776 today!! And this was considered "cheap"??
3 years later the HP 35 came out for ~ $2300 in today's dollars, was pocket-sized and had trigonometric functions.
[edit] In 1968 the HP 9100A (which was programmable and had trigonometric functions) was $5000, or $35k today.
Re: The Casio AL-1000
#16Cool website. I sometimes miss searching for a topic and finding personal sites like this, with interesting content and to the point.
Wow. You just brought me on a time machine. I had forgotten what search used to be like. I would remember likeing the old Internet for its wierd brutalist web design and anonymity but didn't think about how I found the wierd sites using search.
It would awesome if a search engine existed that only found these niche sites and filtered out all the mumbojumbo. Don't know how it would work, maybe train it with a dataset of sites? Someone with more Internet know how should make this for us. Thanks
Re: The Casio AL-1000
#17Cool website. I sometimes miss searching for a topic and finding personal sites like this, with interesting content and to the point.
Wow. You just brought me on a time machine. I had forgotten what search used to be like. I would remember likeing the old Internet for its wierd brutalist web design and anonymity but didn't think about how I found the wierd sites using search. It would awesome if a search engine existed that only found these niche sites and filtered out all the mumbojumbo. Don't know how it would work, maybe train it with a dataset…
I saw this on HN yesterday I think (?). Not sure. But it attempts to do what you're looking for.
https://millionshort.com/search?keywords=calculator%20museum...
Re: The Casio AL-1000
#18My Sharp EL-5813, which I first acquired in 1981 (I think) is still in my desk drawer, and working fine. The most remarkable thing about this particular gadget (aside from the fact that its still working at all) is that in 37 years I have only had to replace the batteries twice.
Do you happen to remember how much you bought it for? Just wondering if it was much more expensive (inflation-adjusted) than a modern one. As there are claims that products these day are made less durable in exchange for being more affordable/accessible.
Sorry, I have no recollection of how much I paid. That was a long time ago. It's definitely true that devices are ridiculously cheaper today. I paid >$1000 in 1980 dollars for an Apple ][. Today you can get a Raspberry Pi Zero for $5. I also don't think that the hardware is that much less durable. I have an iPhone 4S that is still going strong. The real problem IMO is not that things are less reliable, but that they're built to be disposable rather than repairable and upgradeable.
Re: The Casio AL-1000
#19This looks like such a delightful piece of hardware, I wonder if there would be any interest in a faithful reproduction sold as a DIY kit? From my point of view, this sort of technology should stick around, as a hobbyist computing tool.
Roll my own core memory? Hell yeah I would. Work on a core memory assembler (physical) for thingiverse? Also fine idea.
Re: The Casio AL-1000
#20When I was in university, the calculator dream of many engineers was the Casio FX-850P, I got the follow up model Casio FX-880P instead.
I wonder which model is now being favored in Portuguese universities.