TI-74 Basicalc

[Dave Britten]

(06-18-2019 10:17 AM)Nigel (UK) Wrote:  Far superior is the magnificent TI-95: surely the apotheosis of the keystroke-programmable calculator (even if it is perhaps too large for a shirt pocket). The 8K of RAM can be partitioned between registers, program steps, and a file storage area. Both program and data files can be stored, and stored program files can be executed without recalling them to main memory. There are five keys with user-definable LCD text above them which can be used by a program as a custom menu. Programs can be "compiled" by replacing all labels with absolute addresses to make them run faster. It might not be as "friendly" as BASIC, but really, who cares? :-)

Nigel (UK)

Absolutely, that thing is a beast. It can easily give the 41C and 42S solid competition on features, even if it's a bit overweight, and didn't have nearly the 3rd-party ecosystem that the 41 had.

I always thought Casio had the best designs for BASIC pocket computers, largely because of the ten separate program spaces. It seems like they were the only ones who understood that it's a pocket computer, and you're probably not carrying around accompanying mass storage devices (e.g. tape interface) in your pockets, so being able to have 10 separate programs loaded (within memory limits) was a massive win for usability.