Calculator related magazines / journals

[pier4r]

While thinking about this thread http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-8876.html I also remember that some other "librarians" collected a lot of info from magazines/journals. For example here: http://www.pahhc.org/ppccdrom.htm Librarians are really important in my opinion but are not as rewarded as they should be. We have a Prime today only because countless people in history stored information for the next days/weeks/months/years.

Does any active journal/magazine (in English) about calculators exist? Is the article section in this forum the only thing that is similar to an active magazine/journal ? (I think that the article section has a lot of potential, thanks to Mathjax and the flexibility of the forum code)

I ask this because I realized that in many communities more often than not the best contributions - this depends on the reader level - are produced for collection of articles rather than for online forums. Ex: syadmin communities and LISA proceedings, HP calculators communities and HHC proceedings.
Even if I already observed that the HP communities here and on comp.sys.hp48 have a pretty good signal to noise ratio compared to, say, reddit communities ( /r/math and the like). Going through the general forum (page 71 today!), I found a lot of interesting topics with lengthy explanations, the problem is the time needed to find those instead of having a clear collection already there.

PS: observations about my readings through the general forum (note, I mostly pick RPL topics, math topics or 50g topics)
- Dieter is really nice and stresses often the accuracy (in digits) of devices.
- DavidM is amazing with his lengthy explanations.
- Claudio shows sometimes how the newRPL works in comparison to the original firmware but , more importantly, why the 50g works in that way due to his expertise of the internal behavior of the system.
- Valentin posts a little, but sometimes with very interesting insights (Short and sweet math challenge in particular).
- 3298 and David Hayden sometimes chime in about sysrpl (as well as Joe).
- Joe and Han posts from time to time short but very interesting information.
- Namir is very dedicated in his analyses of this or that topic in programming or numerical analysis. He continues to share even when he gets a little feedback, that is really nice! Not many people go through all those things with little feedback from the community (One thing I wonder, though, if he publishes his works also in journals)
- Tugdual did quite some progress with the 50g and started to post contributions but then he disappeared.
- Erich Reichlin (I remember him for the awesome hpcalc.org) and Egand Ford (I remember him for the guide for hpgcc2) sometimes contribute.
- There is a large crowd of people that is mostly interested in 12, 15 variants, 41, 25, 35, 67 etc... For example I remember Gene Wright for his comparison with the TI SR56, 58 and 50/51 (I may be mistaken) with the equivalent HP models at that time.
- From time to time there is someone complaining about RPN and RPL (and complains that "where is the beautiful basic?").
- Then there is the RPN/RPL flame sometimes. (I'd say that RPL is a superset of RPN in stack capabilities)
- all the others, I am sorry I do not remember you now. I only report those that are impressed in my mind so far. Nevertheless thanks for your contributions!

[Paul Dale]

(08-26-2017 05:49 AM)pier4r Wrote:  - all the others, I am sorry I do not remember you now. I only report those that are impressed in my mind so far. Nevertheless thanks for your contributions!

No 34S for you


Pauli

[pier4r]

(08-26-2017 05:55 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  No 34S for you


Pauli

True I missed you and your contributions are interesting as well (no wonder, since you have to deal with functions to implement in the 34s so you know quite a lot). Well, my bad.
Now that I think about it. You and claudio (and some other) did quite some progress in the 38 puzzle. Werner is another one that posts a little with nice insights.

Oh yes, also Gerald H and Don Shepard(Not sure if I remember his username right) post interesting challenges.

Marcus posts less (at least in the General forum)


There was also Walter b but he disappeared from the board after a certain point.

[BruceH]

(08-26-2017 05:49 AM)pier4r Wrote:  Does any active journal/magazine (in English) about calculators exist?

Yes. http://hpcc.org

[pier4r]

Nice, then I assume the datafile magazine is still active!

Any other? (not that the calculator scene needs many magazines, but because I'd like to know)

[Jlouis]

(08-26-2017 06:09 AM)pier4r Wrote:  

(08-26-2017 05:55 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  No 34S for you


Pauli

There was also Walter b but he disappeared from the board after a certain point.

Walter is highly missed. He is on forced "vacation", I don't know if permanently or not, and I think it's time for him to come back.

We can not say thanks enough to Walter, Pauli and Marcus. WP34S is an amazing calculator.

Cheers

[Jlouis]

I would like to mention (honor mention) a fellow not listed above, whom I just read a really nice post in the classified section, that showed to be a true gentleman, very grounded and always available to help, and I frequently watch presentations made by him in the annual HHC meeting on youtube.

His name is Robert Prosperi.

[Vtile]

Well these might be close to calculators what comes to the calculation power.

https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_co...Automation

Funny note.. As computers and automation might be the first computer magazine published (under different name though), but it doesn't have a wikipedia page.

[ColinJDenman]

(08-28-2017 05:48 PM)Vtile Wrote:  Well these might be close to calculators what comes to the calculation power.

https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_co...Automation

Funny note.. As computers and automation might be the first computer magazine published (under different name though), but it doesn't have a wikipedia page.

Thanks for that pointer -- bitsavers has a whole menagerie of old nostalgia to wallow in, including some data sheets for the first microprocessor I ever got to play with, the NatSemi SC/MP, as a University project back in 77/78. Excellent. Had to compile your own programs by hand down to hex codes to key in on a little calculator style keypad and LED display. Had less than 512 bytes of RAM!

Kids today, they'd never believe you :-)

[Vtile]

The thing reading these old computing magazines etc. is that "dang, things were simple back then" and by simple I mean straight forward, no decades worth of all sorts of paradigm lint and fluff everywhere and you had straight route to HW, no zillion layers of APIs and drivers. Yep, one of those "kids" well, atleast I were some point of time.

[EugeneNine]

Those look more to be computer magazines than calculator magazines though I realize the lines are blurred some when a calculator has as much computing power as those early computers.

If your going that route then ones like https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine apply.
maybe some of the ones like https://archive.org/details/ednmagazine

radio electronics and popular electronics had calculator articles IIRC
https://archive.org/details/radioelectronicsmagazine

It was popular electronics IIRC that I read about the HP28 and later 48 which led me to buy one. When other high school boys were staring at the centerfold of playboy I was staring at the HP28 review

HP Journal https://archive.org/details/hpjournal

[pier4r]

I don't mind the collection of nice magazines or journals from the past, though I asked about the active ones (so far, only the hpcc club keeps one as suggested by one user. Plus the MoHPC with the forum section)

(08-26-2017 05:49 AM)pier4r Wrote:  Does any active journal/magazine (in English) about calculators exist?

[EugeneNine]

Thats going to be a tough market. Now a days 90% of calculator users are only calculator users because their school forces them to buy one so its going to be a small market. So many technical journals are going away, Dr.Dobbs, Microconputer Journal, etc,all gone.

[rprosperi]

(08-28-2017 05:36 PM)Jlouis Wrote:  I would like to mention (honor mention) a fellow not listed above, whom I just read a really nice post in the classified section, that showed to be a true gentleman, very grounded and always available to help, and I frequently watch presentations made by him in the annual HHC meeting on youtube.

His name is Robert Prosperi.

Thanks for the nice comments JL. Helping out here is fun, and I find I learn something new almost every time I help someone or answer a question, so it's good for me too.

[pier4r]

(08-28-2017 09:08 PM)EugeneNine Wrote:  Thats going to be a tough market. Now a days 90% of calculator users are only calculator users because their school forces them to buy one so its going to be a small market. So many technical journals are going away, Dr.Dobbs, Microconputer Journal, etc,all gone.

I am aware of it. Indeed I was thinking if something exits it is done by ethusiasts pretty much online with little commercial aspiration (like the article section on the mohpc)

[EugeneNine]

Sounds like it might be a fun project to start one

Might have to include other brands to get enough content, though are there any enthusiasts for other brands, only thing I ever see is people complaining about having to buy ti's for school.

Could call it 'The Calculating Times Journal' or something like that.

[pier4r]

Aside from the idea to start a free journal dedicated to calculators (and related math), that's pretty a nice idea ... I put it in my todos (endless list of things!); I'd like to make a quick recap of my searches so far.

For what I know so far, and I still need to check several links, I collected the following publications related to calculators:

active:
- Datafile from HPCC seems to be active, although it has no 2017 entries.
http://www.hpcc.org/datafile/index.html
- HCC conference proceedings (yearly), see http://hhuc.us/ . For the proceedings, I think one can see youtube (search the channel hpcalc.org ) and here: http://www.pahhc.org/ppccdrom.htm

discontinued but quite related to calculators:
- hp journal (see http://www.hpcalc.org/torrents , the hp 41 dvd ; then http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/hpcalc/hpj/ ; I collected some more checking the hpjournal page and searching for "calculator" in the hp calc torrent)
- hp solve ( see http://www.hpcalc.org/torrents )
- I guess there are more that were discontinued, especially until home computers were not popular. Likely done between 1975-1995 but I did not checked/found them so far.

Question: nothing on the ti side? I cannot believe that the Hp calculators have and had journals while the TI, that is way more common (with today communities also way more active), does not. Same for casio, sharp, etc.

[EugeneNine]

I don't see the hp journal torrent on the link you listed.

As far as TI vs HP. I've ran into several people who own or have owned HP's and every one wanted one for various reasons. I've ran into people that have had Ti's because they had to buy one for a class, I've yet to meet anyone who wanted to own a Ti. So I think that makes a difference in the community support.

[Martin Hepperle]

(08-26-2017 05:49 AM)pier4r Wrote:  ...
Does any active journal/magazine (in English) about calculators exist? Is the article section in this forum the only thing that is similar to an active magazine/journal ? (I think that the article section has a lot of potential, thanks to Mathjax and the flexibility of the forum code)
...

If you extend your language skills to French you can also download and read a nice journal in PDF format at:
http://silicium.org/site/index.php/telec...keticaires

Martin

[pier4r]

(10-20-2017 10:55 AM)EugeneNine Wrote:  I don't see the hp journal torrent on the link you listed.

As far as TI vs HP. I've ran into several people who own or have owned HP's and every one wanted one for various reasons. I've ran into people that have had Ti's because they had to buy one for a class, I've yet to meet anyone who wanted to own a Ti. So I think that makes a difference in the community support.

For the torrent. See the hp41 dvd (that is mentioned in the hpcalc page), it has some issues of the journal.

For TI. Yes I know what you mean but maybe it happens because there are really a lot of TI users. Nevertheless their communities produce interesting information as well. For example:

https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=50 (contests, really nice)
https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=4 (projects. More often than not a "I will do X" and then nothing. But sometimes really nice ideas)
https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=19 (programming in ti-basic. Often the topics are help questions but some are neat)
https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=75 (hey, also a section for us!)

(and I reported sections from only one of the many active TI forums)

Now, damn me, I do not have much time to dig in the TI forums, the MoHPC forums keep me quite busy already.
I also believe that some TI forums even got lost with all their contributions (and this unfortunately happens in general, see awk.info for example or the site of E. Kalinowski about HP informations and articles ).

Anyway the point is that in a large community one finds enthusiasts that then put a lot of effort to produce interesting results or discussions. In the TI community there are plenty of nice discussions. The problem (if it is a problem at all) is that the TI communities have even more "simple" discussions were people asks for help, we don't see this here because most of the requests ends up in the HP official forums*.

* the official forums contains as well a lot of interesting information but are really hard to browse and use.