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Detron's Calculator Experience, or even more proof I am a nerd

detron · 408 · 16253

us Offline detron

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Even though I am not an engineer, teacher in a field that involves math, surveyor, and my jobs math requirement ends at binary for subnetting, I love calculators. 
I have been fascinated with them since about the age of 12.
the basic 4, 5, or 6 functions calculators do not interest me, unless they vintage, and were the high end devices of their time.  I am fascinated by Graphing, Scientific, and some financial calculators.

I have been posting about calculators on Facebook, but Grant recommended I post them here, I guess I did not have enough Facebook friends to allow enough of the world to know how big of a nerd I am, so he felt the 6200+ members here might help ensure my nerdness is known far and wide, even around the globe.

This all started when I was in 7th Grade, and My Mom and I were in a store, and I saw a scientific calculator. My Mom bought it for me and I carried this every day until I upgraded to a graphing calculator 3 years later. the Calculator was a Casio FX-82A. I do not have the original one she bought me, but I do have one I bought at a flea market a few years back. I remember it was a store in Southern Pines North Carolina, but not which one. I remember my amazement when I saw it on the shelf.



this calculator is lacking compared to today's calculators, but is a fine calculator with a nice uncluttered look, and one feature I wish was still a standard,  a physical power switch.  there is little chance of killing your battery due to accidental button pushes.
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us Offline detron

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My Second Calculator
I upgraded from my Scientific Casio fx-82A to a Casio "Power Graphic" fx-7700G around 1992. this was not a bad calculator, it did everything the Casio fx-82A did, and more, but I did not stick with this one long. I used this for about 6 months, and did not really enjoy it, but it sufficed. this calculator was around $90.

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us Offline detron

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My Third Calculator, (my first computer?)
so after not liking my Casio fx-7700g graphing calculator, I used my Christmas money and bought a TI-85. The TI-85 was released in 1992, and I got one around 1993.  This calculator became my tool for self learning the mathematical concepts of my math classes, basic programming, and exploration of advanced math concepts that I was learning on my own, just to understand the calculators functions. I read the manual from cover to cover (361 pages) multiple times. I learned some basic programming, and made a few simple games along with some useful math programs like a Heron's formula solver. this calculator went with me everywhere, and was my version of a Gameboy. to this day, I still know my way around this calculator, and find it a joy to use. I used 8x8 matrices to store "knights Tour" solutions, and the very act of playing with math functions opened my eye to patters of rectangular coordinate patterns. I learned because I had a calculator.
This beauty is not the original one, but the same year of manufacture, and identical in every way.
I made a program for nearly every math and science formula I ran across.

at the time, I did not have a home computer, so I had no way of backing up the programs I made myself.  not a big issue, except before every math, chemistry, or physics exam, teachers wanted your calculator memory erased.
I put hundreds if not thousands of hours into making programs, even some simple games.  I could not have that, so I made a program that emulated erasing the memory, and displaying a memory screen that matched a factory reset calculator.
don't think I was cheating on my tests,  I did not use any programs during the tests, but I could not bear losing all of my work.

This is one of my favorites



another feature of this calculator was the ability to solve up 30th order polynomials, and an equation solver where you enter an equation, and you could just enter values all but one variable, and then it could solve the one you did not know.
I also loved the built in constants, and the unit conversion capabilities.

I have 2 backups of this calculator.
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us Offline detron

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My 4th Calculator.
after getting my TI-85, I subscribed to a Texas Instrument newsletter, and saw a new calculator that was coming out in 1995. I felt I had to have this calculator, but the $250 price tag was steep. Since I knew about it before its release, I had the time to save up for it. I did not NEED this calculator, but I wanted it. it did not replace my TI-85, but became a different calculator that I used for different uses. This calculator included a CAS system (Computer Algebra System), built in Geometry software, and 3D graphing. the QWERTY keyboard meant it was not allowed on most test as it would give an unfair advantage. this calculator also has "Pretty print" to look like a text book, gives exact answers, (Square-root of 2) instead of a decimal answer.
the AA battery is in the picture for scale.

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us Offline detron

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My 5th Calculator (and the last one I remember getting vividly). was purchased around the beginning of 1996, and was required because some classes did not allow a programmable calculator. I picked the Casio fx-115s. a calculator with several features that I liked such as Hexadecimal, octal, binary, Complex numbers, great handling of fractions, simple metric system values (kilo, mega,nano, pico, etc) and a wonderful degrees, minute, second system.
this calculator has a flip cover hinged at the top, and this was my favorite non graphing calculator for many years.
Though I have superior calculators, and have transitioned to an RPN fan, I still love this calculator, and bought a second one years ago as a backup.



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us Offline detron

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a latter upgraded version of my FX-115s by Casio was the fx-115MS. this added a lot of new features like solving roots of 2nd and 3rd order polynomials, derivatives and integrals, replay ability and Metric magnitude values on the 4-9 keys.

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us Offline detron

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another fx-115 series calculator is the fx-115ES. the a/b/c/ fraction button has been replaced with the square/square button, added matrix, vector, stat, and complex menu, integrals and derivatives. this is a nice calculator with a text book display. I got this one at a Goodwill store for $1. put a battery in, and it worked like a champ. it would work in bright light via solar, but with the battery it is much more reliable.

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us Offline detron

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The most recent offerings in the Casio fx-115 family, and one super cool calculator for the price, is the fx-115ES PLUS.
these sell at Walmart for about $13. (sale price, I imagine due to school getting out). this does everything the previous fx-115 series did, and added several features such as a Greatest Common Denominator, Least Common Multiple, the ability to factor a number into its primes, return a Pre answer as well as a Answer (last answer, and the one before). random #, random integer, and one of my favorite features, a division with remainder (example 10 / 3 will yield 3 remainder 1). there are 3 color options that I have found online, but in stores, I can only seem to find the silver one.







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us Offline detron

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in 1982 Hewlett Packard released the HP 15C for $135 ($347.88 in 2017 dollars). This was a BEAST of a calculator when it was released, and it is highly sought after even today. this uses RPN entry method, is programmable, and was one of the first calculators with an LCD display. typical battery life for this calculator was 4 to 7 years, with many examples of 10 to 12 years.
Some of the functions are:
Solver / Root finder
numeric integration
complex numbers
matrix operations

for 1982, this was a great amount of power that fit in a shirt pocket.

this was a popular choice for engineering students in the 80s, and a lot of people still love this calculator to this day.

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us Offline detron

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in 1990, when Texas Instruments was just releasing their first graphing calculator, the TI-81, HP was releasing the 48SX. the MSRP of this powerhouse was $350 in 1990. this calculator could do many types of plotting, including 3D. had two expansion slots, and came with a card to double the memory, and a card with over 300 equations built in, and included a solver. this solver allowed you to give values for what variables you know, and could solve the unknown, as long as you provided enough known variables. some equations actually consisted of 4 or 5 different equations, that worked together to help solve unknowns. it had a whole section for doing time calculations (days since, days until, and had a built in clock and event alarms). There were several expansion cards released for this calculator, and I do have one extra, which focuses on Structural engineering. one of the most amazing features was the built in handling of units. Not only can it convert units (feet to Meters, etc), but it performs the math on them. a simple example, 5_M + 5_mm = 505_mm. this is true of multiple units, such as mph, meters per second squared, etc. the manual came in two parts, and is 852 pages long.

a demo card was used in some stores to showcase the features. I feel this 17 minute video really showcases the king of the 1990 calculator.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLFO46Fp2mM







this is an epic calculator in my opinion.
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us Offline detron

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in 1993, HP released the HP 48GX. a power house that took what they did with the awesome 48SX (see my recent post) and doubled the speed, quadrupled the memory, and moved the equation library onto the device instead of being on a card. (sadly, the great periodic table that was on the equation card did not follow. the SX periodic table had tons of info, and any value, atomic weight, specific gravity, etc, could be pushed to the calculation area for use as a number.) since i have the 48SX with the equation card, this is not an issue for me, I can put my SX card in the GX, and have both versions of the equation library, and the periodic table.
There are so many features, that the available manuals are 3 inches thick. the price stayed the same as the older 48SX, $350 in 1993. I remember going into a "Best" department store in the mid 90s and seeing one of these calculators on display and being amazed by it, but quickly lost interest when I saw the price tag. luckily, I found one years later.



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no Offline Steinar

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Nice trip down memory lane. I started out with different Casios, also, a relatively basic Casio model was one the university standardized on way back when (to give the students something to do calculations with, but no real programming capabilities), I don't remember its model number. When I started commercial work, I picked up an HP 32SII, and nowadays I mostly use an HP 42S emulator on my phone. Big fan of RPN when it comes to interacting with a calculator here.


us Offline detron

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HP improved their Amazing graphing calculator line with the HP 50G, which was released in 2006.
This is the KRAKEN! of calculators from my point of view.
Powerful built-in graphing functions, constants and applications.
Built-in lessons and step-by-step problem solving.
The choice of efficient RPN, Textbook or Algebraic data entry.
User-friendly Computer Algebra System (CAS).
Massive memory and an SD card slot
Large high-contrast display with adjustable font type and size
Large equation library and 2300+ built-in functions.
I showed a few screens of the periodic table application so you can see just how much info it has, and any number and its units can be passed to the calculator as a value. with the HP calculators amazing unit math, this enables complex calculations to be conducted, without screwing up or dropping units.
I know lighter weight was probably seen as a positive, but the older 48SX felt heavier, making it feel more solid.
I do wish that HP continued to provide printed manuals, but HP said they were being environmentally friendly. The Page count on the PDFs paint an amazing picture though
USER MANUAL = 184 Pages
USER GUIDE = 887 Pages
ADVANCED USER GUIDE = 693 Pages
1764 Pages in total!!

The HP Equation Library is far more powerful than most people think, I recommend you check out this video that gives a demonstration of how it is used. the equation library is not just a set of formula notes, it is an advanced solver with details.
http://www.mathtutordvd.com/members/Section_17_Using_the_Equation_Library_HP_50g.cfm














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us Offline detron

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Nice trip down memory lane. I started out with different Casios, also, a relatively basic Casio model was one the university standardized on way back when (to give the students something to do calculations with, but no real programming capabilities), I don't remember its model number. When I started commercial work, I picked up an HP 32SII, and nowadays I mostly use an HP 42S emulator on my phone. Big fan of RPN when it comes to interacting with a calculator here.

I now love RPN.  I did not have HP money back in school, but now, I know why they are so popular.
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us Offline detron

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imagine this, the year is 1984, there are some amazing calculators on the market, especially the HP high end engineering models. the one thing that is always done manually, or on a computer, is plotting or graphing.
then in 1985 Casio released the fx-7000G, a graphing calculator! this is the first portable graphing calculator, and it was quickly emulated by Sharp and HP, but it was 5 years before Texas Instruments provided their first graphing calculator model.

I have a hard time imagining how awe inspiring this must have been for educators, engineers, math lovers, and technology buffs.



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us Offline detron

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This calculator was launched in 1981, but is still on constant production, and is one of the favorites for those in finance, especially mortgages and bonds. that is some serious high praise. This is the Amazing HP 12C. My favorite feature of this calculator is the time value of money calculations are set up where you put any 4 of the 5 variables, and it will solve the 5th, just by pressing that button.

for example,
PRESENT VALUE=$-130,000
FUTURE VALUE=$0 (loan paid off in full)
# of PAYMENTS=180 (15 years)
INTEREST=3%

enter all of those and hit PMT, the calculator solves it to
$897.76

to simplify the math, you can put in number of payments, or use the blue g button first to multiple the number by 12 if you want to put in years, and have the calculator convert into month. The same can be done for APY or monthly rate (divide by 12)

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us Offline gerleatherberman

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Very nice collection. :like:
Pontificating particularly pious positions pertaining to polymorphic paraphernalia. G-Man.


us Offline detron

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I am sure I will have more to come,  I seem to have a problem, that most MTO types would understand.   :rofl:




 :facepalm:
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us Offline detron

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Very nice collection. :like:

thank you.  I am rather fond of it myself.   
Still building, and it is amazing how many were purchased at a thrift store for either $1 or $2.  not the HPs or other Graphing Calculators, but several $10-$25 calculators have been sitting on the shelf for $2 or less
« Last Edit: July 24, 2018, 07:47:31 PM by detron »
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00 Offline Dutch_Tooler

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How nice... I think I have an HP-15C lying around somewhere from my dad's estate, let's see if I can find it the next few days. Thanks for the historical trip detron :tu:
Cheers!
Dutch_Tooler

Location: Southern Germany, most of the time


us Offline detron

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How nice... I think I have an HP-15C lying around somewhere from my dad's estate, let's see if I can find it the next few days. Thanks for the historical trip detron :tu:

the 15C is amazing,  they used Silicon on Sapphire processes, that was a space age technology.
amazing calculator
« Last Edit: July 24, 2018, 08:04:00 PM by detron »
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us Offline detron

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for a 1980, or 1981 calculator (released in 1980, discontinued in 1981) this calculator is in amazing shape.
I still love the dedicated power switch, that is not easily accidentally switched.
The simple solution of a printed card for common constants, and conversions was a nice touch too.
looking at the calculator, and the leather (plastic) case, I would go out on a limb and say this was either not used, or barely used.
this would have been an amazing calculator to have had when it was released.














I bought this on ebay for $6.  I feel it was a steal, and searching the internet, I have not seen any pictures of one that is in as good of shape as this one is.
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us Offline detron

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My final HP calculator that I currently own is the HP 35s

it was introduced to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the HP-35, Hewlett-Packard's first pocket calculator (and the world's first pocket scientific calculator).

The HP 35s uses either Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) or algebraic infix notation as input.

Other features of the HP 35s include:

Two-line alphanumeric LCD
Over 800 memory registers (26 directly labelled)
Scientific and statistical functions
Operation in decimal, binary, octal, hexadecimal
Equation solver with arbitrary variable isolation
Numerical integration
Support for input and display of fractions
Complex number and vector calculations
Unit conversions and table of physical constants
Keystroke programmability with approximately 30 kilobytes of memory for programs and data
The HP 35s has been given a retro look reminiscent of classic HP calculators from the 1970s to the 1990s. However, it provides far more functions, processing power, and memory than most of those earlier models.
Support for vector operations




for those who understand RPN, I think where they made a mistake on this calculator was limiting the stack to 3 levels.  I got spoiled with the infinite stack on the 48 series.
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us Offline detron

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How nice... I think I have an HP-15C lying around somewhere from my dad's estate, let's see if I can find it the next few days. Thanks for the historical trip detron :tu:

let me know if you find it.  there was also an 11C, 12C, and 16C.  they look very similar.
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us Offline gerleatherberman

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I have a very small assortment of retro calculators and a couple of scientific ones, but nothing like your collection, Detron. :)

Pontificating particularly pious positions pertaining to polymorphic paraphernalia. G-Man.


us Offline detron

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I have a very small assortment of retro calculators and a couple of scientific ones, but nothing like your collection, Detron. :)

that is probably because you are smarter than me, and did not decide to hoard them.   :rofl:
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us Offline gerleatherberman

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I have a very small assortment of retro calculators and a couple of scientific ones, but nothing like your collection, Detron. :)

that is probably because you are smarter than me, and did not decide to hoard them.   :rofl:
  :)
Yeah...that's it. I don't hoard. :whistle:
Pontificating particularly pious positions pertaining to polymorphic paraphernalia. G-Man.


us Offline detron

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I have a very small assortment of retro calculators and a couple of scientific ones, but nothing like your collection, Detron. :)

that is probably because you are smarter than me, and did not decide to hoard them.   :rofl:
  :)
Yeah...that's it. I don't hoard. :whistle:

pictures are welcome   :pok:

MTO is the shelter for hoarders.   but that does not mean you hoard calculators.  however, MTO made me want many versions of things I did not even want before.  G-shocks, Swiss Army knives, etc.  so, you might want more soon.   :rofl:
« Last Edit: July 24, 2018, 09:48:58 PM by detron »
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us Offline gerleatherberman

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Indeed. I joined this site and had three SAKs. I don't even collect SAKs and I have a couple dozen now(there were some I "HAD" to have..hehe I do like SAKs. My first real knife was an Explorer). :ahhh
Plier-MTs. Started with 20 or so. Now I have 220. :facepalm:

I can't resist a poke emoticon. :rofl:
Here are some poorly taken photos of the ten calculators I have that work. There are a few more stowed away with issues. I'll have to retake the photos when I get my digital camera back from work. :ahhh















Pontificating particularly pious positions pertaining to polymorphic paraphernalia. G-Man.


us Offline detron

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those are great!   I love the Commodore!   
that Casio CQ-2 is very unique.

thanks for the pictures
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