Finally discovered something a TI-30 can do that an RPN calculator can't

[toml_12953]

(06-09-2020 11:26 PM)Jim Horn Wrote:  Regarding speed - the fastest factoring program ever written for the HP-67 took about 165 minutes to test 9999999967, the largest integer prime it could handle. My HP 50g verifies that it is prime in under 1 second, a roughly 10000 times improvement. And the HP Prime is reportedly much faster still. "Good old days" my foot!

They were the good old days. We had to wait hours to get time on a mini or days to submit a punched card deck for the mainframe. When the HP 65 came along, you could get the answer in a few minutes. It was a huge deal for us engineers back then. Of course you can't compare those old machines to the computers (including smartphones) of today but in the context of their time, they were such a boon that kids today (anyone under 40) can't even imagine what it was like.