HP-12C: The longest production run in the industry?

[rprosperi]

Jose,

I have an update for this old thread and your 12C Variations document. The research you did to compile the data and prepare the documentation is really appreciated, I frequently use this to look up small details (dates, etc.) of the numerous 12C flavors.

The update(s) relate to the relative performance of the 12CP variants; your chart indeed shows some numbers but with a question mark to indicate uncertainty.

The earliest variant (the initial, silver-faced 12CP) performed about 6 x the speed of the original 12C, while 12CP Version-2 (the 2nd silver-faced variant with Undo and Backspace keys added), the Prestige, the 25th Ann Ed., and the later 2x2032 cell versions all perform about the same, at a bit less than three times the original 12C performance, about half of the original version.

While I've no evidence or documentation, I'd guess the key driver in the performance drop is the overhead for the UNDO function added in Version-2.

My results were obtained using the simplest (and not too accurate, but still useful) technique of manually timing a loop counter.

Program:

Code:

01 + [ 40 ]
02 GTO 001 [ 43,33,001]

Fill the stack with 1's, [f] [PRGM], then run the program for exactly 1 minute, noting the number of loops completed when done. (I just look at my watch's second hand).

Thanks again for sharing this nice resource.