calculators without OFF

[vaklaff]

(09-14-2020 01:10 AM)Eddie W. Shore Wrote:  Most solar calculators of the 1980s and 1990s do not have an OFF button.

For the landscape HP calculators, such as the HP 41C, 11C, 12C, 15C, and 16C, the ON acts as both the ON and OFF key. That may be the case with the first Catiga calculator as well, not sure.

No, it isn't. When on, the button serves as Clear. I have a few HPs without OFF but so it was the first thing I tried :-) This Catiga was a flea market buy, without docs, long time ago. The missing OFF or anything acting like it baffled me. I tried everything I could think of, then searched the Internet for its manual (no luck). In the process I found a few 1:1 equivalents (TOOR TR-523, Procalc SC1000, Graph-09XC). They match every button and every label, except OFF and that LRN which seems useless. By the way, I used the TOOR's manual to learn the Catiga.

To my knowledge this is the only model of a battery-only powered calculator without an OFF or equivalent. My guess is the OFF and LRN pair was cut off for slightly cheaper production a maybe the smaller/nicer case.

Quote:Side note: calculators such as the TOOR have a large screen but emulate the Casio fx-6300g and HP 9g have a small graphing calculator screen with no way to enlarge the graphing screen. I find that kind of annoying.

I happen to own fx-6300g too. Not only the display is small but the graphing area is just part of it IIRC :-) I don't actually care about graphing but I imagine that limited display must upset people who do...

I bought the Catiga without really inspecting it. It was pretty cheap (3$ or so), at first glance a Casio knock-off, looked cute enough and most of all, I spotted "PROG" on the keyboard. Only later at home I found out it isn't "properly" programmable, you can just enter a list of formulae in it. And I couldn't find any Casio 1:1 equivalent. It ended up in the lowest drawer until today when I read the "Own up!" post.