I'm in love

[Dave Britten]

(01-30-2024 11:14 PM)John Garza (3665) Wrote:  Back when HP introduced Continuous Memory with the 25C, they said it was for those who use only a few programs repeatedly. It still holds true. It's really not for 'serious programming'. Contrast that with the mag card programmables where you could build a personal library of hundreds of programs and load one in 2 seconds or so.

This brings up another interesting topic. Those of you that use just a few programs repeatedly, what do you keep loaded in your 15C or 11C? I think I might attempt to fit binomial and Poisson distributions, payment for an installment loan, and four or five frequently-used unit conversions (which work nicely on the 15C, where you can use the "dot" labels for the inverse conversions). Possibly also H.MS+ for convenience, since that only takes a few steps.

[Pekis]

(01-31-2024 01:27 AM)Dave Britten Wrote:  This brings up another interesting topic. Those of you that use just a few programs repeatedly, what do you keep loaded in your 15C or 11C? I think I might attempt to fit binomial and Poisson distributions, payment for an installment loan, and four or five frequently-used unit conversions (which work nicely on the 15C, where you can use the "dot" labels for the inverse conversions). Possibly also H.MS+ for convenience, since that only takes a few steps.

Hello, Here's what I keep on my HP-15CE:
Date + Days
Date difference
Day of week
Dice
Normal Dist Cumulated
Inverse Normal Dist Cumulated
DIV / MOD
HMS+
LCM
GCD
Fraction Approximate
Loan payoff
VAN / IRR

[Dave Britten]

(01-31-2024 08:47 AM)Pekis Wrote:  Hello, Here's what I keep on my HP-15CE:
Date + Days
Date difference
Day of week
Dice
Normal Dist Cumulated
Inverse Normal Dist Cumulated
DIV / MOD
HMS+
LCM
GCD
Fraction Approximate
Loan payoff
VAN / IRR

Very nice. I'm assuming this is in 15.2 mode, right? What's your MEM look like with all that in there?

[Pekis]

(01-31-2024 12:43 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  Very nice. I'm assuming this is in 15.2 mode, right? What's your MEM look like with all that in there?

In 15.2 mode, indeed: 16 labels used, current MEM: 51 55 87-2
Initially: 51 DIM (i) so that MEM became 51142 00-0, with 142*7=994 programming steps

[richmit]

(01-30-2024 06:08 PM)John Garza (3665) Wrote:  ...and there is a difference between the everyday-knock-about-calculator, and the one used for serious programming. So consider the use case.

There are lots of usability issues involved in small personal devices like calculators, phones, etc.
It makes deciding 'the best one' something like a weighted decision matrix. And the weights can vary from person to person.

I sincerely WISH I could settle on a single best calculator. I haven't been able to do that, so I end up cycling through my machines, with one 'on the deck' ready to go at any given moment. And yes, there is a 15C in that mix. A good machine, but lacks other features that keeps it from being number one for me.

The search goes on...
How many closets should I allocate to this hobby anyway?

-J

That's so true. The 15C is my perfect shirt pocket companion in meetings -- just what I need, but small & light. At my desk I have a HP16C, HP12C, DM42, and Casio Classpad II. I have them all in this little desktop mail sorter.

At one point I had about 40 calculators. I'm down to 14 now.

I'm not sure what's my favorite programmable. I like the 42S and RPL. Guess I'm wierd.

[richmit]

(01-31-2024 01:27 AM)Dave Britten Wrote:  This brings up another interesting topic. Those of you that use just a few programs repeatedly, what do you keep loaded in your 15C or 11C? I think I might attempt to fit binomial and Poisson distributions, payment for an installment loan, and four or five frequently-used unit conversions (which work nicely on the 15C, where you can use the "dot" labels for the inverse conversions). Possibly also H.MS+ for convenience, since that only takes a few steps.

I store some metric conversions in .7, .8. & .9. I think about the 15C's "programmability" more as a place to put things to be solved or integrated -- not a place for useful software.

I detest typing code into a system with no way to save or transferer it. That's one thing I hated about the 42S -- so much RAM and no way to get anything into it. One thing I love about the DM42.

I started with a 28S. I wrote a few things for it, but it was when I got a 48 that I really started coding. In the first two years I produced something like 120K lines of code for that thing!

I do have a few little programs on my 16C -- floor(log2(x)), ctz(x), & reverse(x).

[John Keith]

(01-30-2024 11:14 PM)John Garza (3665) Wrote:  Read/Write with a PC is a nice feature, but if I have to carry around a laptop, why do I need a calculator? It's a nice feature for documenting/archiving programs though.

You don't have to carry a laptop around, but the ability to transfer programs is IMHO a necessity for any calculator with a substantial amount of memory. The 35S is particularly annoying in this respect- it has a generous amount of memory but no way to get programs/data in or out.

[David Hayden]

We all have our favorite functions. I think this is why it's so important to have a usable USER mode on calculators. Assign Your Favorite Functions to Your Unused Keys and you're off to the races.

The 41C with it's overlays made this pretty easy. IIRC, the 48 series had tabs to hold overlays in place, but I don't know if keyboard overlays and user mode caught on.

Joe Horn has stated that he uses user mode extensively on his 50g.

I've experimented with a "virtual keyboard overlay" program on the 50g. The idea is that when you press the USR key, the calculator displays the key assignments of the top several rows. Pressing the key will execute the assigned function. Ideally, if you press a shift key while the overlay is displayed, it would show the shifted user assignment. Press and hold a shift key and it would show the hold + key assignment. If you know show 20 keys, that's still a total of 100 visible user key assignments just 2-3 keystrokes away.

Finally, I've never understood why pressing a shift key doesn't change the menu line to show the shifted menu function. That would make menus much easier too.

The bottom line is this: you don't need quick access to all the calculator functions, you need quick access to YOUR favorite functions. I think the only practical way to do that is via user mode.

[John Garza (3665)]

I once had a dream...

I was using a new HP calculator.
It still had mechanical keys for tactile feedback, but the keyboard faceplate was a display with holes in it for the keys, and could show different labeling for functions/programs the user wanted. Press a shift key and they all changed.
Sort of the ultimate overlay system.

-J

[richmit]

(01-31-2024 07:16 PM)David Hayden Wrote:  We all have our favorite functions. I think this is why it's so important to have a usable USER mode on calculators. Assign Your Favorite Functions to Your Unused Keys and you're off to the races.

[..SNIP..]

The bottom line is this: you don't need quick access to all the calculator functions, you need quick access to YOUR favorite functions. I think the only practical way to do that is via user mode.

The Casio Classpad II allows you to redefine the shift behavior of almost every physical key. With such a small physical keyboard, this feature means the difference between a useable calculator and a very tedious one.

I had an overlay for my 48 with erasable label spaces upon which I used a very fine tipped pen. I remaped most of the keyboard.

[John Keith]

(01-31-2024 09:01 PM)John Garza (3665) Wrote:  ... mechanical keys for tactile feedback, but the keyboard faceplate was a display with holes in it for the keys, and could show different labeling for functions/programs the user wanted. Press a shift key and they all changed.
Sort of the ultimate overlay system.

In the not-too-distant future, it should be possible to do this with a custom OLED panel. Additionally, I have seen larger industrial pushbutton switches with miniature OLED displays, so why not the key tops as well?

[dm319]

Someone was asking about this on the UHK keyboard forum. The guy who makes the keyboard had a low opinion about OLED keycaps, saying they don't last for long.

[johnb]

(01-31-2024 04:09 PM)richmit Wrote:  At one point I had about 40 calculators. I'm down to 14 now.

I'm not sure what's my favorite programmable. I like the 42S and RPL. Guess I'm wierd.

#1 - but whyyy? :-)

#2 - if you're weird regarding RPL, then so am I. (Ask around; most folks who know me already knew that. :-O )

It's not so much that I'm *fond* of RPL; it's more that I like the customizability of the RPL calculators. I hate trying to read RPL code directly from the calculator, though.

I too am not sure which one is my favorite (despite what my .sig says, LOL). I have about 20 HP calculators and I keep most of them in use. More and more, I'm carrying or reaching for my brand-spanking-new 15c/CE. It does more than I need it to, and lacks very little. I also have an original 15c which is a little more readable in low light, and an 11c that is cosmetically in a bit prettier condition than the 15c. A 16c sits close to my desk, ready for bit-twiddling. I have two 32sII machines: one in pristine condition who shows up fairly frequently in my daily rotation, one really badly beat up one that cost me $1 and goes along on camping trips. If I need complex numbers or matrices I reach for the 48s, kept in a drawer nearby. If I need that plus programmability plus bit-twiddling plus other functions I've already programmed, I grab the 48g kept next to it: the 48g was easier to program but the 48s is prettier! :-)

And then there's my latest acquisition, a pristine 50g bought from another collector who wanted it to go to a good home and priced it accordingly. I hate the keyboard layout. Love the display. Love the functionality. The keys themselves: meh, they really should have been the old-school rocker type, but at least they click. I haven't yet downloaded and installed the libraries I'm interested in from the internet archives: among other things, I want to compare my homegrown not-ready-for-public-consumption Interval Arithmetic library on the 48g with one on the 50g that's written by a mathematician or an engineer whose job depended on it.

Time will tell whether any affection for the 50g might grow or not.

[agarza]

(01-31-2024 09:01 PM)John Garza (3665) Wrote:  I once had a dream...

I was using a new HP calculator.
It still had mechanical keys for tactile feedback, but the keyboard faceplate was a display with holes in it for the keys, and could show different labeling for functions/programs the user wanted. Press a shift key and they all changed.
Sort of the ultimate overlay system.

-J

Something like the stream deck from elgato?

[richmit]

(02-02-2024 09:09 PM)johnb Wrote:  

(01-31-2024 04:09 PM)richmit Wrote:  At one point I had about 40 calculators. I'm down to 14 now.

I'm not sure what's my favorite programmable. I like the 42S and RPL. Guess I'm wierd.

#1 - but whyyy? :-)

I shrunk my collection partly because I live in an apartment, and space was an issue. I also was mostly using my favorites and neglecting the others.

[johnb]

(02-02-2024 11:17 PM)agarza Wrote:  

(01-31-2024 09:01 PM)John Garza (3665) Wrote:  It still had mechanical keys for tactile feedback, but the keyboard faceplate [emphasis mine, jtb] was a display with holes in it for the keys, and could show different labeling for functions/programs the user wanted. Press a shift key and they all changed.
Sort of the ultimate overlay system.

Something like the stream deck from elgato?

Actually, from his description, sort of the opposite. I think he's saying instead of the keys changing, it would be the bezel behind it changing.

I would buy one of those in a heartbeat.

If it were a kit, it would be incentive enough for me to drag out my soldering station and decades old test equipment and set up a bench in my home office. [Uh oh, this is a really bad idea that will get me in trouble with my wife: if I could even find the o'scope, it's analog 1960's vintage, and everything else except the soldering iron is from the 70's, which will send me on a flurry of auction purchases to update things!]

In the distant future I can imagine flatscreen displays that don't stay flat: as you change the configuration of your app or whatever, not only does the display change, but the 3d topology of the display also changes to produce what effectively are real buttons and sliders that have different textures, for seriously good tactile and haptic feedback.

And in that day, some retro geek will reverse engineer himself a device that produces a reproduction of several different HP calculators of similar form factor, changeable by a voice command or a touch of a key. His fellow crewmembers aboard his starship will roll their eyes at this. [:smirk:]

[striegel]

(01-30-2024 10:24 PM)Peter Klein Wrote:  Question: Does (or will) the new POGO programming cable allow the backing up and restoring of user programs? A USB connection would be better. But the ability to use the POGO cable for I/O would be very nice.

According to the latest e-mail I got from The Calculator Store, the following are coming soon:

• user memory back-up and restore
• load and save different profiles
• exchange programs with others
  

Nothing specific about HOW soon.

Alan

[Jake Schwartz]

(01-31-2024 09:01 PM)John Garza (3665) Wrote:  I once had a dream...

I was using a new HP calculator.
It still had mechanical keys for tactile feedback, but the keyboard faceplate was a display with holes in it for the keys, and could show different labeling for functions/programs the user wanted. Press a shift key and they all changed.
Sort of the ultimate overlay system.

-J

This was exactly what Tim Wessman presented at the HHC2005 conference in Chicago....the entire calc surface, including the location of the normal display would be e-ink. (In the PPC Archive, go to Section 4, select HHC2005 toward the bottom and check pages 14 through 25 of the proceedings.)

I suspect that we would all love this arrangement :-)

Thanks,
Jake