Does the 42S deserve its fame? Message #11 Posted by Andrés C. Rodríguez (Argentina) on 24 May 2002, 12:30 p.m., in response to message #8 by Tony Duell (UK)
I am a supporter of the 42S, but I do admit it has minuses against a 41. There are pluses too.
Pluses are BASE, MATRIX, STATS, PROB, SOLVE and INTEGRATION preprogrammed functionality and rather good menus, apart from a lower price, better size and no corrossion prone parts. I bought my 42 mainly because it was very expensive then to repair my corroded 41C backplane (which also left it I/O-less!)
The 42S certainly should have had some kind of BIDIRECTIONAL I/O, a serial port might have been acceptable. And also, the ALPHA keyboard is clumsy. It also should have been repairable instead of a sealed unit.
If the 32SII had been not so inconsistent, it could fill the role of a reasonable scientific calc, with lots of preprogrammed functions, but it should had a BEEPer, some more memory (less than 400 bytes for programs and data... no comment), and more consistency about equations, complex numbers, etc. The way the 32SII "does" an AVIEW involves toggling a syntax-error-override flag, and then use a purpose-invalid equation (!!)
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