TI-74 Basicalc

[Dave Britten]

(06-18-2019 11:23 AM)grsbanks Wrote:  

(06-18-2019 11:18 AM)Dave Britten Wrote:  I always thought Casio had the best designs for BASIC pocket computers, largely because of the ten separate program spaces.

That was undeniably a big "plus".

Sharp got partway there with their concept of "DEF" labels. If you placed a letter (only the bottom 2 rows of the keyboard) in quotes as the first instruction on a line, then pressing the "DEF" key followed by that letter would start execution at that point. E.g.:

Code:

980
990
1000 "S":{more instructions}
1010
1020

Pressing "DEF" then "S" would cause program execution to start at line 1000.

Yeah, Sharp sort of approached that with the DEF key, but it didn't allow for the same flexibility as Casio. For example, if you were getting your things ready before work/school, and thought to yourself, I need to do some finance work today, so I'll load the TVM/annuities program, and I'm also going to be doing some actuarial work, so I'll load that program, and I've got plenty of memory left, so I'll load blackjack.

On a Sharp, you'd have to carefully segment things within the combined line number address space, and I don't know if any of their computers could reassign line numbers on the fly while loading programs from tape or other devices.

The Sharp PC-1500 may have been a real powerhouse, but I'll take a Casio fx-740P any day.