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Casio AI-1000 Pocket Lisp Computer from 1989 [video]

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Re: Casio AI-1000 Pocket Lisp Computer from 1989 [video]

#41

Post by jaytaylor »

airstrike wrote: post #26
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a HN thing, it's everyone with a passion for technology, the same way how someone with a passion for cars will appreciate an old-timer rather than his Toyota Corolla. Honestly, stuff like this provides some much needed escapism for me as I feel burned out from scraping all the cruff from the bottom of the Jira barrel wihch is most "tech" jobs nowadays and miss the days I used to just tinker with stuf I enjoy…

+1. I hope you saw the dishwasher post from this weekend!

I think airstrike is referring to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27013880

Re: Casio AI-1000 Pocket Lisp Computer from 1989 [video]

#42

Post by whartung »

mschaef wrote: post #36
p_l wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good reason for that is the changed shape and keyboard, which disfavors RPN and mimics contemporary casio calculators (even docs have strange preference for mentioning algebraic mode first). The large enter of hp-48 and earlier RPN calculators makes way more sense, especially if you're going to do anything fast. TBQH, I'd love a hp-50g internals (or better) in hp-48gx case :)

For context, the 50G came out at the tail end of HP's development of calculators. (In fact, the original Corvallis calculator group had disbanded and the group that produced the 50G was a reconstitution assembled in part from the HP48 enthusiast community.) By the time the 50 rolled around, computers had reduced the role of calculators in professional work, and HP was left addressing the enthusiast and educational ma…

I was devout HP-48 fan back in the day, even did some custom programming for one for a client (got paid!), deployed about 20 of them in to the field. This thing was a real delight to write programs for. Just RPL, nothing fancy. For $99 at the time, they were a handheld powerhouse.

My singular complaint about them today is the lack of a backlight. It's just plain hard for me to read now.

I do have one on my iPhone which slots right in to the "good enough" category, even though the tactile feedback of the keyboard is lacking. What it lacks there is more than made up in handiness and readability. My go to application for it is equation solving.

Re: Casio AI-1000 Pocket Lisp Computer from 1989 [video]

#43

Post by chevill »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #16
Gravityloss wrote: post #9

The title ticks all the HN top post boxes. Lisp. Pocket computer. Casio. Eighties.

It's not a HN thing, it's everyone with a passion for technology, the same way how someone with a passion for cars will appreciate an old-timer rather than his Toyota Corolla. Honestly, stuff like this provides some much needed escapism for me as I feel burned out from scraping all the cruff from the bottom of the Jira barrel wihch is most "tech" jobs nowadays and miss the days I used to just tinker with stuf I enjoy…

> It's not a HN thing, it's everyone with a passion for technology, the same way how someone with a passion for cars will appreciate an old-timer rather than his Toyota Corolla.

From my experience at least 90% of people passionate about technology have never heard of LISP. If you restrict that set of people to just programmers then a lot more of them have heard of it, but there's still a surprising amount that haven't.

Re: Casio AI-1000 Pocket Lisp Computer from 1989 [video]

#44

Post by tartoran »

oilbagz wrote: post #3
erk__ wrote: post #2

Reminds me of the Lisperati: http://www.lisperaticomputers.com/

.. which seems to have inspired a few like-minded souls: https://www.clockworkpi.com/devterm

These are very cool devices that I would buy to play around with but, I don't really understand the idea with a hingeless flat screen. That can promote a very bad posture if used on a table as one needs bend the neck to see the screen. Sure, these could be used in handheld mode but how much can you type with thumbs only before you want to use more fingers??

Re: Casio AI-1000 Pocket Lisp Computer from 1989 [video]

#45

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

classichasclass wrote: post #35
johndoe0815 wrote: post #6

An emulator (written in Delphi for Windows) and more information on the AI-1000 and the closely related PB-2000C (which runs C compiled to some sort of p-code) can be found at http://www.pisi.com.pl/piotr433/pb2000ee.htm PockEmul ( https://github.com/matsumo/PockEmul ) also seems to support emulating the PB-2000C and AI-1000.

More relevant to this thread, the PB-2000C has a Prolog option. I have one with that card.

wow, a knowledge base in a calculator. Did the calculator have any relation to Japans fifth generation project? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer

Re: Casio AI-1000 Pocket Lisp Computer from 1989 [video]

#46

Post by mmcgaha »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #23

Prices for HP-48’s are through the roof these days. However HP-50’s are not loved currently despite being the same rpn/lisp/graphing calc software just with much faster processors - they are the much better buy right now and can be had under £50. My 50g is one of the most convenient ways to check my arithmetic when it comes to dates and hours calculations. I think overall though, these are a relic and the best way fo…

50G isn't loved? My guess is that the 50G will be the most loved over time. Really it is the end of the line and the pinnacle of a HP RPL calculator. It looks great (better then the 49g+), has a good keyboard and is very responsive.

On a side note James Donnelly's HP 48 Programmers Toolkit added CAR and CDR commands.

Re: Casio AI-1000 Pocket Lisp Computer from 1989 [video]

#47

Post by Hammershaft »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #16
Gravityloss wrote: post #9

The title ticks all the HN top post boxes. Lisp. Pocket computer. Casio. Eighties.

It's not a HN thing, it's everyone with a passion for technology, the same way how someone with a passion for cars will appreciate an old-timer rather than his Toyota Corolla. Honestly, stuff like this provides some much needed escapism for me as I feel burned out from scraping all the cruff from the bottom of the Jira barrel wihch is most "tech" jobs nowadays and miss the days I used to just tinker with stuf I enjoy…

“I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don’t think we are. I think we’re responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new di- rections, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don’t become missionaries. Don’t feel as if you’re Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don’t feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What’s in your hands, I think and hope, is in- telligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.”

— Alan J. Perlis

From the opening of SICP. I didn't think it was the most amazing quote when I read it but when I hear the frustration and cynicism of many devs on the state of computing it makes me wonder.

Re: Casio AI-1000 Pocket Lisp Computer from 1989 [video]

#48

Post by dang »

AlbertoGP wrote: post #37

This was a duplicate of another thread posted one hour earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27034951 The comment I posted on lobste.rs: I’ve been curious about this computer for some years, and bid on one some time ago, but at more than 600 € that was more than I was going to pay for it. As far as I know, the machine is internally the same as the PB-2000C which I do have, just with different key labels and a…

That thread was posted later than this one. You can tell from the item IDs.

When we put a story in the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), the timestamp gets relativized to the re-up time, which can be confusing, though not as confusing as not doing it. More explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

Re: Casio AI-1000 Pocket Lisp Computer from 1989 [video]

#49

Post by ddingus »

ddingus wrote: post #40
zabzonk wrote: post #32

Oh dear, the thought of typing Lots of Infuriating and Silly Parentheses on a calculator keyboard doesn't exactly inspire! It's not clear from the bit of the video I watched, but presumably there was some sort of IDE-like help with this?

IDE? Sure, the whole machine is the development environment. Integrated to the nines, everything you need right there in your pocket. And frankly, that machine was luxurious!! Multi-line display, reasonably sized keyboard? NICE. The ones I used were typically one or two line displays. Workable, but not pleasant. Today, yeah. We have very luxurious user interface capabilities! Fantastic displays, sounds, keyboards, to…

Just adding a thought here:

Truth is a couple of Mhz, reasonable RAM and basic I/O can do a whole lot! That is exactly what these little guys did, in addition to being portable, which I wrote a little about above.

Most of the value is still there too. Often we have an app, but we could also have more people writing little programs on their phones.

Lots of resistance to that, and I understand why, but...

This topic got me to thinking about Hypercard for mobile.

Package up all the hard bits, give people a few robust options and a place to input the few lines of code that matter and suddenly we have all the value of those little devices and in a way more powerful form.

Re: Casio AI-1000 Pocket Lisp Computer from 1989 [video]

#50

Post by p_l »

whartung wrote: post #42
mschaef wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, the 50G came out at the tail end of HP's development of calculators. (In fact, the original Corvallis calculator group had disbanded and the group that produced the 50G was a reconstitution assembled in part from the HP48 enthusiast community.) By the time the 50 rolled around, computers had reduced the role of calculators in professional work, and HP was left addressing the enthusiast and educational ma…

I was devout HP-48 fan back in the day, even did some custom programming for one for a client (got paid!), deployed about 20 of them in to the field. This thing was a real delight to write programs for. Just RPL, nothing fancy. For $99 at the time, they were a handheld powerhouse. My singular complaint about them today is the lack of a backlight. It's just plain hard for me to read now. I do have one on my iPhone whi…

Haha. I missed the glory days of hp-48 (plus they never seemed very popular in Poland), but when I got my first android phone, pretty soon out of curiosity I installed Droid48...

Ever since then, I keep an emulated HP48 with me.

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