Presenting your collection of non HP calculators, is anyone interested of that?

[Gene]

Video from HHC 2012 where I showed a few of my "favorite things".

HHC 2012

[Didier Lachieze]

(04-06-2022 02:19 PM)Roland57 Wrote:  some more pictures from my collection

Nice pictures !

(04-06-2022 02:19 PM)Roland57 Wrote:  The ICC 82D is the only calculator I know of with an analog battery indicator

Here are several other calculators from the same era with an analog battery indicator (there may be more):

• apf MARK V
• SCM Marchant I
• Walther ETR3
• Canon Palmtronic LE-10 and LE-80M
  

[rprosperi]

(04-06-2022 02:19 PM)Roland57 Wrote:  some more pictures from my collection:

Thanks! Some of these old machines are cool, 4-banger status be damned!

I like the looks of the Sanyo machine, the orange characters are great. Is that in a hard, protective carry case?

A couple questions about the FACIT machine:

1. In the display showing 0.14?8571, is the "?" character a 2?

2. What is the "Alarm" indicator for on the upper left? Does the machine get alarmed if you divide by zero? It seems the Error indicator would be enough...

I'm not a fan of the Anita machine as it is, but I think it would look a lot better with larger LED or VFD digits.

Thanks again.

[BruceH]

(04-05-2022 03:28 PM)Dan C Wrote:  How do i take good photos of my calculators?
I have a decent Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 camera, but it has so many options to set!
and background? and lightning?

"Food" from the Scenes menu is a good starting point. Daylight is always preferable to artificial light, but not in strong direct sunlight because of the shadows. Using a plain cotton or linen cloth on a table in a sunlit room as the background often works well. Be aware that you may get a colour tinge (colour cast) in the pictures if the walls aren't white or a neutral colour.

[Roland57]

(04-07-2022 09:19 PM)Didier Lachieze Wrote:  Here are several other calculators from the same era with an analog battery indicator (there may be more):

• apf MARK V
• SCM Marchant I
• Walther ETR3
• Canon Palmtronic LE-10 and LE-80M
  

Thankyou ! Very interesting and good to know.

Roland

[Roland57]

(04-07-2022 09:58 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  Thanks! Some of these old machines are cool, 4-banger status be damned!

I like the looks of the Sanyo machine, the orange characters are great. Is that in a hard, protective carry case?

Yes, it is:

[attachment=10546]

Roland

[Roland57]

(04-07-2022 09:58 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  A couple questions about the FACIT machine:

1. In the display showing 0.14?8571, is the "?" character a 2?

2. What is the "Alarm" indicator for on the upper left? Does the machine get alarmed if you divide by zero? It seems the Error indicator would be enough...

I'm not a fan of the Anita machine as it is, but I think it would look a lot better with larger LED or VFD digits.

Thanks again.

it is the character "2". As I mentioned, the style of the characters is very specific. Here all numbers are shown:

[attachment=10548] [attachment=10549]

The red alarm indicator to the left is related to the power supply: it indicates a situation, where the charger is plugged in but the battery is not charged.

[attachment=10550]

"Error" on the right side is related to calculator errors as expected and is close to the minus sign.

Roland

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(04-08-2022 07:42 AM)Roland57 Wrote:  it is the character "2". As I mentioned, the style of the characters is very specific.

These unusual VFD tubes were made by Noritake Itron in Japan (if I remember correctly) and used by several calculator companies like Sharp, Sanyo or Burroughs. I must have a Sanyo with these tubes somewhere... will post a picture when I've got the time to look for it.

(04-08-2022 07:42 AM)Roland57 Wrote:  Unfortunately I reached my limit of 8 MB for attachments (and I don't know how to increase it), so I'm unable to post any more pictures

The easiest option would be to reduce the image size somewhat and/or the JPEG quality. I took the liberty to modify your Facit picture to 65% JPEG quality without changing the pixel count. This alone brings down the file size from 450 to 100kB. I attach the picture for comparison.

Regards
Max

[vaklaff]

I'm not a photographer, sorry for the poor quality. Anyway, here are a few programmables I find interesting.

Some early stuff from from Casio, Sinclair and Sharp:

In reality, the Sharp's display is good, even, the picture is misrepresenting it :-(

Then one Russian "eggog", a lesser known Sharp with a programming model same as EL-5150 and finally something from the dark side:


I have a soft spot for the fx-4000p model by Casio as well but that was extensively covered by jebem a few years back.

In a hypothetical world without HP and SwissMicros, the TI-65 would be my go-to calculator, I guess...

[striegel]

(04-08-2022 11:44 AM)vaklaff Wrote:  ...not a photographer, sorry for the poor quality....

No apologies necessary. These are beautiful!

I enjoy seeing the variety you have on display here.

[vaklaff]

(04-08-2022 12:06 PM)striegel Wrote:  

(04-08-2022 11:44 AM)vaklaff Wrote:  ...not a photographer, sorry for the poor quality....

No apologies necessary. These are beautiful!

Thank you. Well, people here discuss how to do it properly, light and all that jazz I know nothing about :-)

(04-08-2022 12:06 PM)striegel Wrote:  I enjoy seeing the variety you have on display here.

Yeah, that's what interests me most, various approaches to programmables that appeared over time. Especially in those good old times when programming was actually fun. What a contrast to the daily toil behind a PC today :-)

[rprosperi]

(04-08-2022 11:44 AM)vaklaff Wrote:  I'm not a photographer, sorry for the poor quality. Anyway, here are a few programmables I find interesting...

Thanks for posting these.

The Sharp Elsi Mate PC-1200 is very interesting as this has a label that this is a "Pocket Computer" yet is a vertical format machine.

Generally speaking, Sharp marketed horizontal format devices as Pocket Computers and vertical format devices as calculators. While it was not uncommon to market horizontal devices as calculators (e.g. the EL-5500, El-5500II, EL-5500III which were all retail channel "calculator" models of the VAR channel PC-1403 line) I've never seen the opposite of a vertical format device positioned as a Pocket Computer.

Looking around a bit quickly, I see only the PC-1200 and PC-1201 and PC-1300S that are of this type, and all are from the late-70's, so probably before they standardized the naming and channel conventions used for most of the later models we all know.

Thanks for picking that one to share!

I also agree the TI-65 and -67 were interesting machines, but painfully slow...

[Didier Lachieze]

(04-08-2022 05:17 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  Looking around a bit quickly, I see only the PC-1200 and PC-1201 and PC-1300S that are of this type, and all are from the late-70's, so probably before they standardized the naming and channel conventions used for most of the later models we all know.

Yes, in addition to the PC-1200/1201 the PC-1300/S was also a vertical format device positioned as a Pocket Computer:

[Dan C]

I have a soft spot for the fx-4000p model by Casio as well but that was extensively covered by jebem a few years back.

One of my Casio calculators is the fx-4000P, and that one is one of my favorite!
Second only to my FX-602P.

[vaklaff]

(04-08-2022 05:38 PM)Didier Lachieze Wrote:  

(04-08-2022 05:17 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  Looking around a bit quickly, I see only the PC-1200 and PC-1201 and PC-1300S that are of this type, and all are from the late-70's, so probably before they standardized the naming and channel conventions used for most of the later models we all know.

Yes, in addition to the PC-1200/1201 the PC-1300/S was also a vertical format device positioned as a Pocket Computer:

The irony! My collection is very small but nearly complete. I mean I have almost everything I wanted - except this rare “mini-fortran” Sharp. And my hopes aren’t high. And of course, someone has to show me his :-)

By the way, according to Viktor Toth there was a little brother - PC-1300 (without S). Does anyone know a bit more?

[vaklaff]

(04-08-2022 05:46 PM)Dan C Wrote:  One of my Casio calculators is the fx-4000P, and that one is one of my favorite!
Second only to my FX-602P.

Yeah, two best Casios ever! One small gripe though, my fat and clumsy fingers need a tiny-tiny bit bigger keys than these two marvels have :-)

[Dan C]

(04-06-2022 02:19 PM)Roland57 Wrote:  Next a Fact 1111 from 1970/71 (technically a Sharp EL 8). Interesting the shape of the digits in the display.

That must be a FACIT, not Fact. FACIT was a company from my country, and maybe the only one making calculators there.

[Roland57]

(04-08-2022 06:38 PM)Dan C Wrote:  

(04-06-2022 02:19 PM)Roland57 Wrote:  Next a Fact 1111 from 1970/71 (technically a Sharp EL 8). Interesting the shape of the digits in the display.

That must be a FACIT, not Fact. FACIT was a company from my country, and maybe the only one making calculators there.

yes its a typo, it is a FACIT 1111. But all FACIT did is to put its label on a Sharp EL 8

Roland

[Didier Lachieze]

(04-08-2022 06:12 PM)vaklaff Wrote:  By the way, according to Viktor Toth there was a little brother - PC-1300 (without S). Does anyone know a bit more?

As far as I know the only difference is the memory size: the 1300S has 42 registers vs. 26 for the 1300 and 640 steps of program memory vs 256.

[harryp]

Some of my aliens.