I found an HP-12c at Savers for like $2 about 2 years ago! It's a "financial calculator" and I don't really know how to use it :-)
HP re-releases classic computer science calculator: The HP-16C
121–130 of 140 posts
Re: HP re-releases classic computer science calculator: The HP-16C
#122I would love a programmers' calculator but I really hate RPN. I wish they would make one without it. Back in the day they did it for efficiency. But that's no longer an issue these days. I do still have a mint HP48GX but never use it for the same reason. The successor the 49 had normal math as an option but it was not as iconic.
RPN felt so weird and alien to me, and then one day I felt my brain pivot, and now it's the only method I can bear. RPN isn't just more efficient for the calculator to process. I mean, it is , but that's not the selling point. It's way more efficient to use . It requires the least number of keystrokes necessary to enter a formula, and never requires parentheses for grouping. You can start at the innermost nested, hai…
When I started studying electronics in 1975 I didn't have a calculator, they were very expensive. Then rumours started about an upcoming low-cost Texas Instruments calculator, and IIRC early 1976 I could buy one - the TI-30. As did many of my classmates. The next year or two I used that one, and other similar calculators which entered the marked.
Then one day a guy some two classes above me handed me a HP calculator to try.. and the RPN immediately clicked with me, I could just enter arbitrary long calculations without ever messing up anything or having to keep track of parentheses in my mind. From then on I never looked back and I was on HP calculators ever since (up to and including the Free42 on my phone today).
I have an original HP-16C as well, I used it a lot back in the day, until calculations and transformations of hex, octal and binary was so ingrained in my mind that I didn't really need it much. It's in a drawer, but it's still good. I think I'll make some more use of it now that I'm near retirement age and just doing retrocomputing.
I've heard about the supposed loss of quality of later "HP" calculators, and I may not want to buy this one anyway (as I have an original), but I'm also waiting for someone to review the keys. The keys! That's HP calculators as I learned to know them.
Re: HP re-releases classic computer science calculator: The HP-16C
#123I was never able to get into RPN, but I always heard great things about these.
Re: HP re-releases classic computer science calculator: The HP-16C
#124I was never able to get into RPN, but I always heard great things about these.
Back in the day it was useful to know RPN. Because somebody will ask to borrow your calculator, and if you hand them an HP they'll say "oh... thanks, but no thanks". You get to be nice and you don't have to worry about some bozo forgetfully walking off with your calculator.
Re: HP re-releases classic computer science calculator: The HP-16C
#125I'm a lifelong fan of HP calculators. I have a 15c in front of me right now that I've had since the mid-ish 80s. Still works perfectly. But the 15c 'Collector's Edition' had some issues, and I wonder about the build quality and reliability of this new one, too. Plus: my guess is you can get an original working 16c on eBay for less than this is going to cost. Honestly, it pains me to say it but I'd recommend a SwissMi…
Given that one employee's position is described as "Chief Typography Officer", I will probably not be able to resist buying one....
Re: HP re-releases classic computer science calculator: The HP-16C
#126I'm a lifelong fan of HP calculators. I have a 15c in front of me right now that I've had since the mid-ish 80s. Still works perfectly. But the 15c 'Collector's Edition' had some issues, and I wonder about the build quality and reliability of this new one, too. Plus: my guess is you can get an original working 16c on eBay for less than this is going to cost. Honestly, it pains me to say it but I'd recommend a SwissMi…
> But the 15c 'Collector's Edition' had some issues, and I wonder about the build quality and reliability of this new one, too. Build quality deteriorated (from impressive heights) more than 25 years ago, when HP's calculator manufacturing moved to China. Not on account of China itself, but it was definitely a cost-cutting measure, and higher-end calculators were becoming an endangered species even then. For example,…
> cost-cutting measure
They really had no choice, Japanese brands like Casio and Sharp were making dirt-cheap scientific calculators in the '80s, I had one in high school and used it through college. The HPs were intriguing but I could never afford one.
They could have kept their standards up and sold a few to the few people who would pay for them, but that would have been a number that went down every year. A calculator as a veblen good probably would not have worked.
Re: HP re-releases classic computer science calculator: The HP-16C
#127For me, custom calculator capabilities is one of The top 5 reasons to carry a mobile computing device in my pocket.
I have too many calculator apps I hardly use, but nevertheless .. love to collect.
Re: HP re-releases classic computer science calculator: The HP-16C
#128For me, custom calculator capabilities is one of The top 5 reasons to carry a mobile computing device in my pocket. I have too many calculator apps I hardly use, but nevertheless .. love to collect.
Which ones are your favorite? I like Soulver for math with units.
Re: HP re-releases classic computer science calculator: The HP-16C
#129For me, custom calculator capabilities is one of The top 5 reasons to carry a mobile computing device in my pocket. I have too many calculator apps I hardly use, but nevertheless .. love to collect.
Which ones are your favorite? I like Soulver for math with units.
HexCalc and speedcrunch are my gotos whenever bc isn’t within reach ll
Re: HP re-releases classic computer science calculator: The HP-16C
#130I have one of the originals. It's useful if you do low-level programming a lot, and in a pinch you can also use it as a standard calculator. The biggest limitation is that the screen can only show 8 digits. In binary mode, this can be awkward if you're working with variables that are more than 8 bits. The calculator has functionality for scrolling around the number that's being displayed to try to work around this, b…
What would you use it for? I’ve done plenty of 16 bit hex math back in the day so I can see some level of handiness there, but never quite got what it was meant for, or why someone would want a physical device for it. However, I’d love to hear more!
It's useful for anything where you have to deal with bits and bytes, for example programming a driver on a microcontroller or handling serial communications. It's also keystroke programmable, which means you can easily write a program that simulates the processor you're working on doing a series of bit operations, then run it on a bunch of different inputs to see if it works on the full range of inputs. Depending on the platform you're targeting, this can be a lot faster than jumping straight to writing the code and debugging it.
If you want a concrete example of something it's good for, a while ago I had to write code to read the value output by a Neptune water meter. These meters use a very strange and inefficient signaling protocol, where each individual data bit has a start, stop, and parity bit. I had to write a program to read the data out of a packed 8-bit buffer, validate it, then convert it to a number, which involved a bunch of bit operations.
Obviously a physical device isn't necessary for stuff like this, it's more something that's nice to have than something that's absolutely necessary for low level development. For example, Windows comes with a programmer calculator but it's not programmable and it doesn't use RPN so this is a little bit nicer for me.