HP-85 A.K.A Capricorn

[Dieter]

(05-28-2018 06:45 PM)Valentin Albillo Wrote:  

(05-28-2018 05:17 PM)Eddie W. Shore Wrote:  Watching a few videos on the HP 85. I like the screen that comes with the unit. I understand it had all the HP calculator functions (at the time - like the 41C or 67?).

What do you mean by that ? It had the usual mathematical functions found in most other popular BASIC implementations, give or take a couple.

Hmmm... let's go back to early 1980s. What were the popular BASIC implementations back then? Apple Integer and Applesoft BASIC, TRS80 BASIC, or the versions for the various Commodore 2000...8000 series computers. Any other popular dialects? Maybe Microsoft BASIC?

Then take a look at the mathematical functions of these BASICs. What you get is essentially a square root, exp and natural log, power, sin/cos/tan, abs, int and maybe sgn, and atn as the only inverse trig function. And all this with radians as the only available angle unit.

In contrast, the HP85 featured three angle modes, a complete set of inverse trig functions (asn, acs, even two atn functions), sec, csc, cot, ceil, floor, ip and fp, natural and base-10 logs, remainder, and more. And all this in 12-digit BCD precision over a domain that is even larger than today's 52-bit double-precision.

So it looks like, at least for numeric applications, compared with the common BASIC dialects of the time the HP85 was far superior. But of course I don't know all BASICs that were around in the early 80s. Which ones, would you say, had a comparable set of mathematical functions?

Dieter