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HP-34C BETTER THAN S*X
Posted by Norm on 30 Mar 2003, 3:18 a.m.
HI!
This nostalgic post concerns getting REUNITED with my old flame, the HP-34C, here in 2003. Hadn't seen one since about 1985.......... it was really quite endearing to get a nearly brand new unit shipped over, thanks to classified ads at this HP Museum !
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After a troubling encounter with the bizarre plastic case halves on a SPICE machine (difficult to take it apart) its all checked out and this baby is up and running. THIS IS MY FIRST TIME TO GET A CLASSIC BACK INTO MY HANDS AFTER 18 MISERABLE YEARS OF HAVING DUMPED MY 34C for a 32S.
Early version with unsoldered chips inside said to be unreliable? I dunno, thats what this one is, and its working OK. I like the extra 1.5 ounces of weight.
LED's, RED LED's YEAHHHH. And a SWITCH. YEAH, a REAL LIVE POWER SWITCH. *CLICK*. OOH YEAH
C L I C K !!
Not like a 32S where they were too greedy & cheap to give you a power switch.
You can see the bureaucrats in the HP boardroom right now, designing out our switches. Sitting around a $90,000 Mahogany table that is 50 feet long, everybody wearing $2000 "power suits" and sitting in chairs that cost $4000 each, but we don't get a 5 cent power switch. Mmmm Hmmm...
The 32S was already cost-reduced to the point of a cereal-box-toy, but they discontinue it like they can't make any money ?!?!
SOOO I AM REDISCOVERING THIS BEAUTIFUL 1979 WORKHORSE, after multiple owners and 25 years on this Earth, its ready to go to work.
NO STINKIN SOFT-MENU'S. You want to F, ENG, 4 ? TO CONFIGURE THE DISPLAY ? JUST DO IT. You don't have to hit 2nd, DISP and then continue with a soft menu, like 32S.
I put this baby into Engineering Display mode, does it say something bleccchy like
"14.142E0" ???? NO! AN HP-34C SAYS 14.142 00
YEAHHHHHHHHHH. In nice clear crisp RED LED digits.
R E D
L E D S !!!!!!!!
No, I don't calculate in sunlight. I calculate indoors. I want RED LED's !!!!!!!! THEY ARE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN A ROW OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL CHEERLEADERS .
OHHH ITS GETS BETTER AND BETTER. I MAKE A LITTLE PROGRAM. IT WORKS, IT WORKS !!
I got some nice "LABEL" buttons right up top, label a program "A" or "B" and run it easily just by pushing "A" or "B".
Think you could do that with a 32S ?????? HA HA HA HA HA HA no way charlie.
I GOT A REAL LIVE SWITCH TO GO BETWEEN "PRGM" AND "RUN" bet those HP bureaucrats are doing speeches right now with powerpoint and excel spreadsheet, to prove that nobody should have a slide switch anymore.
THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME, I MADE A PROGRAM, SO NOW I RUN THE PROGRAM AND ALL THEM LED'S START A BLINKIN'
KeR blIPPTY blippITY BLIP BLIP.
KeR blIPPTY blippITY BLIP BLIP.
KeR blIPPTY blippITY BLIP BLIP.
KeR blIPPTY blippITY BLIP BLIP.
U gotta love that one kilohertz CPU speed. OOOO LAAA LAAAA. (OK I admit, if they speed that up with a new CMOS chip, I'll accept that. But no other "improvements"!!!!!!!
THIS THING IS GEORGEOUS. Couldn't a done it w/o the HP Museum. Thanks dgh.
Every key push is like total ecstacy. Little keys with little tiny hinges on them, that really push with some character. KLUNK, KLUNK, KLUNK, when you push these keys. But HP-32S has just got a whole bunch stuck in there all blow-molded at once. You get that flim-flammy feel on all those uninspired brown-plastic cereal box calculators because the keys aren't even free floating. Yeah, they should put a 32S at the bottom of each box of "Fruit Loops". Then we wouldn't have to pay for them.
THIS THING IS AWESOME. A month ago, I said on the forum board that HP should start making these HP-34C 's again, right now, in 2003 ! Now that I have had the good luck to re-acquire a nice sample, and get re-acquainted with my old friend from 25 years ago.......
I WAS RIGHT !!!! MAKE 'EM BRAND NEW! Then I don't have to worry about losing this one.
HUBBA HUBBA OOOO WEEEEEE BAAABEEEEEEEEE. HP-34C .
If I saw a kid trying to learn trigonometry and calculus, I'd get him one of these. AWESOME. The graphing calculator craze makes no sense, dropping RPN makes no sense, because we are trying to deal with NUMBERS not with graphs. You are supposed to know in your head what Y= X^2 looks like w/o a gimmicky calculator to try and show you. That's why this HP-34C is so substantive.
And thanks to more modern high-power batteries, the RED LED display is not something to fear..... it's something to be ENJOYED ....... I am gonna put some Nickel Metal Hydride batteries in this, OR... Rechargeable Lithium !!!
While I re-read the HP-34C owner's manual to rediscover what made it such a cool machine, I am busily COMPARING IT to the HP-32S.
If you just type in a scientific notation number, like 25.251 E 08 I immediately noticed how much more nicely it was formatted. The decimal number is pressed to the far left, the exponent is pressed to the far right. Crisp, clear and you don't even need an "E" in the display.
The 32S crams all the numbers together for scientific notation, with no spaces and uses an "E" to separate them.
You don't need an alphanumeric display! You don't even want that on your calculator. The 34C sports 20 registers, 0 thru 9 and .0 thru .9 . You don't need A to Z, it only clutters the machine.
OK, we can always find some sort of advantage to the 32S. It has got 12 digits, the 34C has only got 10. But so what, the 34C is more fun. One designer can build a beautiful machine with an economically constrained 10 digit display, the other builds something boring and dull with a 12 digit (or even more sophisticated) display.
I am absolutely ecstatic that the internet is allowing us to re-acquire beautiful older pieces of equipment, and spend our money on other things, and run circles around HP corporation, if the corporation no longer builds what we wish to buy.
Thank you for sharing this moment which I am really enjoying, getting reacquainted with a machine so marvelous, it took comparing it to several of its descendents to realize how far out in front they were, way back in 1980.
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