HP Forums

Interesting that many people are second-generation HP calculator fans.

(12-01-2017 05:58 PM)pier4r Wrote: [ -> ]The 35s has a bad reputation...

I wouldn't have said that, and indeed I bought one. I'd say there's a bug list, and a vocal minority who have taken a dislike to the machine. It's the same with many things: you hear from a self-selected sample, and people with strong opinions, especially negative ones, like to be heard.

My passions

Extremely outdated.
But I promise by the end of next year to add the rarer items when I return to my bunker :-)

(12-02-2017 01:01 AM)Dave Frederickson Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-02-2017 12:29 AM)Sylvain Cote Wrote: [ -> ]Dave,
Actually, Clonix-41 (Dec 15, 2003), predate the introduction of MLDL2000 (Sep 25, 2005) by almost 2 years.
Sylvain

Yes, I should have included the MLDL2000, but then the 41 was winning the "option race" and I wouldn't have been able to get in the joke with Massimo.

So, Sylvain, you have an extensive HP collection. Which models do you consider common and/or popular?

Oh, and I know exactly where that first Clonix-41 is now. ;)

(12-01-2017 08:04 PM)lemontea Wrote: [ -> ]So, while everyone was chatting about who has the bigger calculator collection (lol --- I think there is just some minor difference in culture)... I managed to get one of these old babies:

https://imgur.com/gallery/Nk7KB

Looks to be in good condition too! The paint is flaking off my 42S's front plate it's had that much use over the years. A fair amount of dust has managed to creep under the display window too.

(12-01-2017 06:48 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote: [ -> ]That's not just one or two people; it's a sizable fraction of the forum membership, and probably everyone who responded to your poll!

well then I am biased due to threads like this: http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-9609.html

I was really thinking that aside from the joy to have the piece of technology (like this guys says in this video) people would use them on and off, also for the joy of using them.

My Ti 34 (that I bought convinced that it was the one used by my father, but I failed, it is not) can be easily superseded by the sharp el506w. Nonetheless I try to use it for simple stats about expenses (while the 506w is reserved for more complicated stuff).

So, yes projecting behaviors, I thought that the majority here would do like dieter, gerson and others, playing around with calculators when possible.

(12-01-2017 08:45 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote: [ -> ]Another approach in deciding which calculators are common/popular/interesting is to consider which calculators have had recent after-market options designed. Or, How to Have Even More Fun With Your Favorite Calculator.

Yes that is interesting too, but I won't consider only hardware producs, as the software is needed too and it is far from trivial to develop.
Moreover many more can contribute with software, contributing with hardware has more financial barriers.

So in terms of software, not only emulators*, I know at least: newRPL, RPL/2, Free42, ND1+, and the calculator from Namir.

Where the RPL software is a sort of tribute of the 49, 48, 28S series.

* that are a hard project as well, but it is not a new implementation of the computing functions.

In addition to my previous post, I am waiting for my HP 41CV to arrive by mail. Does that count?

(12-02-2017 01:01 AM)Dave Frederickson Wrote: [ -> ]So, Sylvain, you have an extensive HP collection. Which models do you consider common and/or popular?

I am a technical person and I do not have an insider view on the business models so I will leave this space to peoples like Gene Wright who knows way better than me these models.

Here is my list of the most important and sold RPN/RPL technical calculators:

1. HP-35 (Feb 1972 to Feb 1975, v1/v2/v3/v4, RPN, 300+ thousands units sold)
   First hand held scientific calculator, instantly puts the slide rule in retirement.
   It was very pricey, but for the technical peoples it was a game changer and they bought it like crazy.
2. HP-65 (Jan 1974 to Jan 1977, RPN, I have no clue of how many units were sold)
   First hand held scientific programmable, card reader, huge library of programs.
   Lots of peoples learned programming with this model and its successor the HP-67 (Jul 1976 to Jan 1982, RPN).
3. HP-41 (C/CV/CX, Aug 1979 to Nov 1991, RPN, 1+ million units sold)
   First hand held alpha-numerical LCD, hugely customizable, plug-in modules, peripherals, etc.
   Another game changer, instantly killed the competition, very popular among the surveyors.
4. HP-48 (S/SX/G/GX/G+, Mar 1990 to 2003, RPL, no clue on how many unit sold but I expect it to be big)
   Big LCD, symbolic calculation, very versatile, could be extended (SX/GX) through add-on cards.
   The HP-28C was the first to brings the symbolic calculation to the hand held calculator world, but it was the 48S/SX that democratized it, again, very popular among the surveyors.
   

The others models suffer from medium to short production life with no expandability. I can only see them in path, like:

• HP-21 -> HP-31E -> HP-10C
• HP-25 -> HP-33E -> HP-11C -> HP-32S/SII -> HP-33S -> HP-35S
• HP-29C -> HP-34C -> HP-15C -> HP-42S
• etc
  

I would have loved to list the HP-71B here, but I cannot.
Although it was a technical marvel, its limited initial memory size and landscape format made it a hard sell to field peoples.
Compared to other BASIC landscape models from the competition, its 1 line LCD was desastrous (ex.: Sharp PC-1600).
Its end price, once you brought it up to its full potential, put it out of reach of many potential buyers.
It may had been a relatively big success if HP did not killed it so soon (3.5 years).

As for the Prime, I am not qualified to make a good evaluation.
I have one, play a little bit with it, but its definitively not for me, it feels more like a vertical computer with a keyboard than a calculator.

If I had to be the system designer of a computer/calculator hybrid, I will use a smart phone as the software platform and design a physical keyboard that will partially wrapped over it.
With something like that you have the maximum software flexibility while retaining the physical keyboard.
The manufacturer only have to make the keyboards and the softwares that adapt to peoples smartphone they already have.
My armchair quarterbacks 2 cents view

My personal choices are:

• HP-41CX -> RPN king of expandability
  Still usable today, thanks to Monte Dalrymple (41CL boards), Diego Diaz (Clonix/NoV modules), Ángel Martin (countless modules) and others who still make software for the thing.
• HP-48GX -> the power of RPL and until recently still commercially available through the HP-50G
  Thanks to Claudio Lapilli for his gigantic and still ongoing work on the newRPL project.
• HP-71B -> the most powerful BASIC hand-held computer
  Thanks to Hans Brueggemann for his huge memory upgrade (FRAM71/FRAM71B)
  

Sylvain

edit: add hand held to all items in the first list

(12-02-2017 03:48 PM)Sylvain Cote Wrote: [ -> ][*]HP-35 (Feb 1972 to Feb 1975, v1/v2/v3/v4, RPN, 300+ thousands units sold)
First scientific calculator, instantly puts the slide rule in retirement.
It was very pricey, but for the technical peoples it was a game changer and they bought it like crazy.

Small nitpick/ignorant question: wouldn't the 35 be the first pocket/portable scientific calculator?

As far as I know the first electronic calculator that was not a mainframe was a wang something (Loci 2 ?), then another series (wang 300 ?) then came hp with the 9100 and it was the end of large profits for wang.

So actually people should have been used to the HP way since some years due to the 9100 (and successors) series, or not?

(12-02-2017 12:33 PM)pier4r Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-01-2017 08:45 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote: [ -> ]Another approach in deciding which calculators are common/popular/interesting is to consider which calculators have had recent after-market options designed.

Yes that is interesting too, but I won't consider only hardware producs, as the software is needed too and it is far from trivial to develop.

The point was to identify possible calculators in which to show interest. From your poll predictions it appears that you're only interested in calculators for which you can write RPL. If that's the case then that could have been mentioned in the subject of this poll.

Now that I've responded to your poll I'd like you to respond to mine. It's software related so you might find it interesting.

What Was Your First Programming Language?


Dave

Wow indeed, significant use, but that is also beautiful (using it for what it's been designed for).

(12-02-2017 12:13 PM)grsbanks Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-01-2017 08:04 PM)lemontea Wrote: [ -> ]So, while everyone was chatting about who has the bigger calculator collection (lol --- I think there is just some minor difference in culture)... I managed to get one of these old babies:

https://imgur.com/gallery/Nk7KB

Looks to be in good condition too! The paint is flaking off my 42S's front plate it's had that much use over the years. A fair amount of dust has managed to creep under the display window too.

(12-02-2017 04:07 PM)pier4r Wrote: [ -> ]Small nitpick/ignorant question: wouldn't the 35 be the first pocket/portable scientific calculator?

Yes you are right, added hand held to all items in the list.

Hello!

An excellent overview!

(12-02-2017 03:48 PM)Sylvain Cote Wrote: [ -> ][*]HP-41 (C/CV/CX, Aug 1979 to Nov 1991, RPN, 1+ million units sold)
First alpha-numerical LCD, hugely customizable, plug-in modules, peripherals, etc.
Another game changer, instantly killed the competition, very popular among the surveyors.

But here I have an objection: At least in my part of the world, the HP-41 did not blow away the competition. Simply because too few people could afford to buy one. A 41 with a memory module, card reader and printer cost at least three times as much as a Ti59 complete with printer - with comparable specs. I was at university from 1980 till 85 or 86. During all those years only one of my fellow students had an HP-41. He had served as a fighter pilot in the airforce for twenty years and could afford it. Everybody else had either Ti, Casio or Sharp. By far the best value for money was offered then by the Casio fx 602p (introduced 1981). It had an alphanumeric display, about the same memory size as the Ti59 or HP-41, offered mass storage through a cassette interface and was at least ten times as fast as the HP or Ti. And the accessories (cassette interface and printers) cost a tiny fraction of the Hp ones.

Regards
Max

Sylvain,

Thanks for the very informative analysis. I agree that the 71B was not successful.

I suppose the reasons it's my favorite is because it's more of a computer than a calculator and BASIC was my first programming language, and it's an HP. Plus, with HP-IL I can make it do things like backup the calibration constants on my 3468 DMM.

I think we call the 71B a calculator is because it has a dedicated numeric keypad and it's smaller than the 75.

Computers in my collection that meet the criteria of being "very old HP" and thus acceptable topics of conversation include a 200LX, Portable PLUS, 85B, and the 75's.

Dave

(12-02-2017 04:21 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote: [ -> ]From your poll predictions it appears that you're only interested in calculators for which you can write RPL. If that's the case then that could have been mentioned in the subject of this poll.

No it is not. I explained multiple times why I gave those predictions (shortened: I thought more people would gather around the last calculators that nonetheless sold for decades like the 48 series) . I was unaware of the 41 success .

Nice link though, I did not read that post yet. Thanks !

(12-02-2017 04:22 PM)lemontea Wrote: [ -> ]Wow indeed, significant use, but that is also beautiful (using it for what it's been designed for).

Very true. However, I'm giving it a bit of a rest now, before all the paint disappears

I've been using my SwissMicros DM42 for the past 6 months or so, albeit less than I did the HP-42S because my main daily driver right now is a DM41L, which is perfectly sufficient for most electronics work. Now that the DM42's firmware is becoming mature (public release should be next week all being well) I'm using it more and more.

Here you go. All working.

41CX
11C
15C LE
12C Platinum
50G
35S
30b
32S
17b2+
Prime

Dave.

(12-02-2017 04:33 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote: [ -> ]An excellent overview!

(12-02-2017 03:48 PM)Sylvain Cote Wrote: [ -> ][*]HP-41 (C/CV/CX, Aug 1979 to Nov 1991, RPN, 1+ million units sold)
First alpha-numerical LCD, hugely customizable, plug-in modules, peripherals, etc.
Another game changer, instantly killed the competition, very popular among the surveyors.

Which brings up an interesting observation. Surveyors make up a significant number of HP scientific calculator users. Meaning no offense, but that wouldn't normally occur to me.

Consequently, HP made Survey Pacs for many of their calculators including the 35, 29C, 33E, 34C, 41, 65, 67, 75, 9815A, and 71B. BTW, the highest priced 71 system currently on eBay is for surveying.

Other companies made surveying pacs for other models including the 48, 49/50, and Prime.

(12-02-2017 05:25 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote: [ -> ]Surveyors make up a significant number of HP scientific calculator users.

This thread brings back a lot of fond memories :-) Back in my university days I often passed by a shop (or rather: I chose my may so that I would pass by that shop...) which mainly sold surveying gear. Theodolites and tripods and measuring tapes. But it also was the only shop within reach that exhibited some HP calculators. The usual places where one would shop for a calculator (stationary shops and department stores) did not have HP stuff because at those prices they wouldn't have been able to sell it. Or maybe it was the policiy of HP Germany then that they would only supply specialist distributers with their calculators.

I think I briefly mentioned my Compucorp calculators, but for the thread statistics I want to explicitely mention the Compucorp 354 Surveyor - a dedicated programmable calculator with hardwired surveying formulae. With that wonderful orange gas discharge display (Panapelex) which is even better than red LEDs. HP may have won the surveying market in the long run, but certainly never made the most remarkable surveying calculator!

Regards
Max

From the 80s onwards, the HP calculators that I used to see (and keep seeing) everywhere are the 12C, 15C and similar designs. So I would have guessed that those were the most common by far. Somehow, none of my friends or family had the 41C, but I guess they must have been very popular elsewhere. One friend of mine and I both had the 32SII in the 90s.

(12-02-2017 06:15 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote: [ -> ]The usual places where one would shop for a calculator (stationary shops and department stores) did not have HP stuff because at those prices they wouldn't have been able to sell it. Or maybe it was the policiy of HP Germany then that they would only supply specialist distributers with their calculators.

Hmm, that's odd. I bought my first three HPs at V&D, long the largest chain of department stores in the Netherlands. And it wasn't like they were cheaper in the Netherlands, either; in fact, I bought my fourth HP in Germany, because electronics and photo/video equipment etc. tended to be significantly cheaper there (partly because of a lower VAT rate, but I don't think that accounted for the whole difference).