Sharp PC-1262

[robve]

(02-17-2022 07:24 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  Initially I kind of ignored the Sharps in favor of Casio, but then I learned more about labels, definable keys, MERGE, and the conditional behavior of INPUT, and very quickly became more enamored. And Sharp has a leg up over the Casios which don't have any replay feature - if you make a mistake in an ad-hoc calculation, you have to re-enter the whole expression. As much as I like the Casios, that always irritated me.

I can second that. I gravitated heavily toward Sharps over the years (many years ago actually) after using both Casio and Sharps.

(02-17-2022 07:24 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  The Casios still tend to have more built-in scientific functions though.

Do you think that is true for all of the vintage Sharp pocket computers? Sure, the early 80s Sharp PCs (PC-12xx/PC-1500) had very limited scientific functions. The PC-1350/PC-1360/PC-2500 are BASIC-oriented machines focused heavily on graphics and printing/plotting, thus taking ROM space away from math functions. But the PC-14xx line of machines (still in the 80s) is quite impressive, no? These have hyperbolic functions, polar conversions, combinations/permutations, factorial, statistics, matrix operations, and some more.

In my opinion, the Sharp PC-1475 comes close to being perfect for math-oriented programming by combining the best Sharp features into one machine. It has a file system to store programs and data, has single and double precision (20 digit) variables and operations, has ON ERROR GOTO to catch errors, has up to 64KB RAM with two 32KB RAM cards, has matrix operations and equation solver, has one and two variable statistics with storage, has a serial port and it has a 2x24 character LCD display.



On the other hand, I prefer the 4x40 character LCD graphics display with graphics of the PC-E500, which has a powerful BASIC interpreter, but lacks a DEF key and AREAD and has no computed GOTOs and no DATA expressions (only literals, like most BASICs). A C compiler that some Casios and Sharps have and a built-in system monitor like the PC-G850 are great to have too. Built-in math applications like the PC-E500 has or ROM packs like the HP-71B are great.

I got my PC-1475 from France a few years ago. It has become one of my favorite machines. I don't believe the PC-1475 was ever introduced in the US?

- Rob