Casio fx-4500P: Nice looking pocket machine made in China

[vaklaff]

(12-11-2021 06:16 AM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  Wow! That has a remarkably modern construction for 1989. Epoxy covered chip-on-board and the heat seal flex ribbon connection to the LCD are technologies I expect today, not in 1989. And made in China? I don't think I had much in the way of electronics made in China in 1989.

Maybe the production ended later than 1989. I happen to have two specimens, one made in Japan, the other made in China. I recall that when I was taking them apart for cleaning, the Japanese one was very "tidy", no epoxy and such, while the Chinese one looked somewhat messy. I'm not an electronics hobbyist so it's a very superficial and possibly unjust view. Anyway, the boards were visually very distinct. I guess that there were years between the introduction to the market in 1989 and then moving the production to China, which included some assembly changes as well.

Another difference I can see on my two machines is faceplates. The Japanese one has a very ugly problem, it's covered with some strange thin layer that is very slowly peeling off but in no way I can't remove it. The Chinese one is fine in this respect but overall I think the faceplace was poorly designed anyway because the labels of the shifted functions are quite hard to read. The predecessor - fx-4000P - is not only better looking, it's better ergonomically. To me, the fx-4000P is the best of all Casio programmables. IMHO there hasn't been a "classy" model since then...