Pragmatics of a polyphonic calculator (chapter 2)

[Joseph_21sv]

My bad, the calculator can get away with a graphic resolution equivalent to no less than 32x24 (I must have written off the Atari 8-bit family because it used a CPU little different than the Atari 2600 did) and a 16-bit CPU address bus width (in case the latter wasn't obvious from giving the base calculator 64K of on board memory).
Chris, speaking of the Nokia 5110, it looks to have been a very entry-level mobile phone and even entry-level mobile phones have supported polyphonic ringtones since the late 1990s, which is coincidentally the time polyphonic sound was predicted to come to handheld calculators (1979: monophonic sound output to audiocassette [Casio fx-501P], 1988: monophonic sound via internal speaker [HP-28C], ca. 1997: polyphonic sound via internal speaker [heaven knows which because never happened]). Since this calculator only needs to be an entry-level scientific or business calculator with a triphonic synthesizer, I suppose it can technically also get away with a monochrome display.
Of course, if you agree that these amendments to the minimum requirements for the calculator specifications are sound (pun for those willing to take it), you would still want more pixels or colors even so (there is very little that is really possible with only 96 bytes per frame unless you are clever with how you implement video interface logic).